


Changes

by twisted_sheets



Series: Changes [1]
Category: Finder no Hyouteki | Finder Series
Genre: AU, Canon is your warning, F/M, Fucked Up Relationships, Genderswap, Reproductive Coercion, Threat of forced abortion, Violence on a pregnant woman, dubcon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-11-18 12:42:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 17
Words: 42,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twisted_sheets/pseuds/twisted_sheets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Genderswap AU, where Takaba is a woman. Shortly after ‘staying a while’ (that is, moving in) with Asami, Takaba finds herself pregnant, and not quite sure who the father is. I would like to say 'hilarity ensues,' but. Well. It doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

Takaba doesn't remember what exactly tipped her off, that something within her had changed.

Maybe it was the odd tenderness of her breasts, their sudden sensitivity to touch, the faint darkening of her nipples and areola. Or it could be the back pain (that had nothing to do with, er, _other_ activities), the occasional sudden dizziness or nausea, the inexplicable fatigue and sleepiness she felt at times.

But maybe, it could mostly be the delay of her monthly period. Which didn't seem all that unusual in the first place, really. Her menstrual cycle was sometimes irregular, thanks to various stressful events in her life (read: sleepless nights during stake-outs, poor nutrition, pressure at work, ASAMI), her own whacked out, stubborn hormones, and the birth control pills she was taking, so a delay of a month or two doesn't really bother her or raise alarm bells in her head.

A delay of nearly three months, however, was, well. That. That was something else.

Oh yeah, alarm bells were _definitely_ ringing in her head.

" _Shit_ ," she says, very quietly, as she stands in front of the mirror in Asami's (their) bathroom, still wet and naked from her recent shower, dumbstruck with this sudden realization. She is faintly aware that on the other side of the door was Asami, who was still quietly sleeping on his (their) bed (because he is not a morning person and likes to sleep well until late morning and because he spent a good chunk of last night and very early this morning _fucking her into the mattress_ ), unaware of her epiphany, and of the possible, sudden, and enormous change in her (their) lives. A shiver ran through her whole body.

It's going to be a long, _long_ day.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takaba takes a pregnancy test, and waits for the results.

_You are mine, every part of you. I won’t tolerate anything, or anyone, encroaching on what belongs only to me._  
  
  
Takaba left the apartment before Asami woke up.  
  
(She’s not running away. Really. She’s not. She’s just trying to get a head start before the actual running begins.)  
  
She hit the already-busy streets dressed out in a style far from her usual vintage jeans and worn sneakers — a black full skirt coat and sturdy boots and a scarf, wearing dark glasses and a bandanna round her head, disguises and changes of styles made necessary by the horde of batshit insane fanboy/girl stalkers she had after the incident with that…celebrity (who would NOT stop texting and calling her and she was so tempted to sic Asami on him). Once, she cursed the inconvenience the whole thing caused, but now, she was thankful. Asami and his men wouldn’t think her actions odd. They’d just chalk it up to her avoiding those stupid fans.  
  
With quick, impatient steps, she made her way through the city, hardly pausing until she reached a quieter, less visited and secluded parts. She slowed her pace for a moment, and it didn’t take long for her to spot a 24-hour convenience shop.  
  
She stops on the door, hand on the bar, and takes a quick look around behind her. Goosebumps covers her skins as she shivers of the thought that she had been followed by someone. _Well, it’s now or never_. If she thinks too hard, she’ll lose her nerve now.  
  
Taking a deep breath, she pushes the door open, and goes in.  
  
\------  
  
Takaba’s had a few pregnancy scares before, thankfully not when she was in her teens (for which her parents and grandparents were eternally grateful), because back then, she wasn’t so much interested in sex and romantic relationships as she was in pissing off the local law enforcement and her teachers, thrill-seeking, exploring the world beyond and pushing boundaries, and being pretty much an annoying little brat, but she was _rebellious_ , not _promiscuous_ , for fuck’s sake.  
  
Her first scare had been during the weeks in the aftermath of Asami’s ‘lesson’, their first sexual encounter. Aside from the other indignities he had forced on her, the bastard hadn’t even used a condom or any other sort of protection and then came inside her (fine, she knows withdrawal wasn’t the most effective form of birth control, but _still_ ).  
  
If Asami’s goal in fucking her bareback had been to intimidate and scare the crap out of her with an unwanted pregnancy, well, he had gotten exactly that. She spent several days _terrified_ that he could have knocked her up.  
  
What Asami did to her, she could deal with, she could move on from that, but a child was another matter. She was pretty sure she wasn’t ready to be a mother; as much as she liked kids and was good with them, her finances and her goals didn’t really leave room for children now.  
  
If things had taken turn for the worse, she could have gotten an abortion, but she wasn’t quite sure if she could go through with that — her moral compass was a tricky thing; she’s not sure where it would point in this matter.  
  
And there was the old bastard himself to consider. She had been pretty sure then that Asami had forgotten about her and probably wouldn’t give a flying fuck if she was pregnant or not (and maybe would take some sort of sick pleasure if he knew), but she didn’t want to take the chances of him finding out and thus doing _something_ to her because of that, and so she took pains to ensure no one knew.  
  
Worst was, thanks to Asami’s fingers pretty much being in every pie in this city-slash-country, she couldn’t simply just waltz into a clinic or hospital and get herself checked, or go to the cops for some sort of recourse. Neither could she tell her friends or parents what had happened, so she dealt with it—the fear, the rage, the worries—all alone.  
  
Takaba liked to think that made her a stronger person.  
  
A home pregnancy test, done in utmost secrecy and stealth (that is, she stole it, _what, she was a sorta-reformed delinquent_ ), eventually confirmed she was not pregnant, and her menstruation came a few days later. She’d never thought she’d be so happy her period came, never mind the nasty cramps that accompanied it. She’d thrown a hot pot party with her friends and got happily wasted. Not exactly the smartest plan, but fuck it. She’d just dodged a bullet there, she was entitled to celebrate in any way she wanted.  
  
(And if Asami knew she had tested herself, he never mentioned it to her.)  
  
\------  
  
Now here she was, several months later, taking another home pregnancy test (which she had casually swiped from a drugstore, just like the last time), in yet another inconspicuous bathroom stall, waiting for the results to show up. God, she’d forgotten the agony of waiting to know what her fate would be, the sound of your heart pounding loud and strong in the empty bathroom, those three minutes that seems to stretch for hours on end with nothing to do but think of w _hat the hell was she going to do if this comes as positive?_.  
  
Because she’d been thinking about it the whole day, and the only thing she could be sure right now is that this would change _everything_.  
  
God she isn’t even sure _who_ the father is. She hadn’t gotten her period in almost three months. She could have gotten pregnant anytime between before her kidnapping or during or after it.  
  
That. That was something else she was very worried about.  
  
She glanced at her watch, and judging it was time, looked at the little stick, but not before taking a deep calming breath.  
  
Two pink lines.  
  
 _Oh, fucking hell._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fem!Takaba’s name in this AU is Aki. I thought about leaving it as just Akihito, though.


	3. Chapter 3

 

Takaba’s second pregnancy scare happened the first time Fei Long abducted her. But truth be told, she wasn’t so much scared of getting pregnant than being fucking _terrified_ of Asami. It was probably the only time she’d been afraid for herself with him, which was a disturbing thought, because, really, the guy is a ruthless bastard, a crime lord, and Takaba shouldn’t feel anything less than _wary_ with him.  
  
In hindsight, she really, _really_ should have not gone with Asami after he sprung her out of Fei Long’s den, her own nakedness be dammed. She should have gladly walked through the streets of Tokyo in her birthday suit to her apartment rather than get into Asami’s car.  
  
The car ride had been the most awkward, tension-filled one she’d ever been. She’d been curled up like a loaded spring at one end, huddled in the warmth of Asami’s coat, while Asami was on the other end, calmly smoking a cigarette as he looked out the window, emitting such a “don’t fuck with me” aura that made Takaba want to wrench the doors open and jump the fuck out of the moving car several times during the trip.   
  
(Sometimes, she still wishes she did just that. That would have been the less traumatizing choice.)  
  
By the time they got to Asami’s place, Takaba’s nerves had been wound up so tight it was almost a relief when Asami all but hauled her to the bathroom so she could ‘clean herself up, you’re dirty’, and then left her alone without another word. She flipped the bird to his retreating back, then after a brief hesitation, turned on the shower. She did feel filthy, but not for the reasons Asami’s words implied.  
  
For the next few minutes, she scrubs herself hard and raw and red under the hot, almost scalding water, unflinching in the heat. The wounds and bruises she received may take a while to heal, and the memories of what happened may even take a longer time to fade, but it did feel good to wash away the grime (the dungeon had been filthy _you have such lovely skin_ ), smells (the sickly sweet smell of opium-soaked tobacco y _our body knows the touch of a man_ ), and various dried bodily fluids (blood, sweat, and semen _I should carve out your organs and send it to him in pieces_ ) that stained her body ( _look at the way you swallow me right up_ ).  
  
Her relief is short-lived, unfortunately, as Asami came back just as she was finishing up, in his hand what appeared to be a small sheet of medical blister foil with two white pills.  
  
Her eyes widened. “If you think,” Takaba says, stepping back from him, chin tilted up, “I’m taking anything from you after the last time you forced drugs into me, you’re wrong.”  
  
Asami’s eyes rakes over her dripping wet form before he looks at her face and gives her his trademark knowing, _infuriating, condescending_ smirk that makes her want to _punch him in the face_. “They’re morning-after pills, for–”  
  
“I know what a morning-after pill is for, I’m not stupid.” She doesn’t ask how the hell he even got hold of them, and instead just takes another step back, Asami still being far too close for her comfort. She wonders if she could knock him down by barreling into him so she could make her escape. “Nice of you to be so concerned for my reproductive welfare, but I won’t need them. It’s…I’m…fine.”   
  
She stares back at Asami with stoic grimness, mouth drawn to a tight line, not saying another word of explanation despite his skin-flaying, probing gaze. Like hell Takaba would tell him that after her pregnancy scare with him, she’d vowed never be put in that position again, and promptly started taking birth control pills. Not that she expected to run into Asami again. But better safe than sorry.  
  
So this time, she wasn’t as concerned with a possible pregnancy with Fei Long as with Asami. She’d taken her pills religiously, and by some twist of good luck (if it even could be called that), her kidnapping and rape by Fei Long happened while she was in her placebo week, and so she wasn’t that worried she missed a day or two of taking pills; she was still safe and protected. She’s far more concerned about catching an STD from Fei Long and getting out of his den alive and in one piece than getting pregnant.  
  
What is it with these organized crime types and going _bareback_? Aren’t they concerned about catching and spreading diseases, or ending up with many bastards? But considering the line of work they were in, Takaba should have known they didn’t have that much scruples about these things. Besides, Asami probably pulled her medical file prior to their meeting, and Fei Long could have done the same, and both probably knew she was clean, amongst other things. _Fuckers_. What about _her_? How was she supposed to know if they were clean or carried some weird STD?  
  
When she doesn’t say anything further, Asami closes the distance between them in a single step and loops one arm around her and pulls her hard against him. He takes her chin with his free hand and turns her face towards him, unperturbed by the hands on his chest trying to push him away.   
  
“You _do_ your learn your lessons. A pity your learning is extremely selective.” The smirk again, with that maddening jaguar-in-a-cello voice, deep and laced with amusement. “And a blank disc? That’s almost clever of you.” He leans in even closer, and she could smell that dark animal scent that makes her want to _run and run_ (and sends a heady rush of adrenaline that floods her body). “Are your trying to get the better of me, Takaba? What _have_ you done with the data?”  
  
She gives him a sweet (completely fake) smile. “It’s blank? Oh, sorry, but I had nothing to do with that.” Her triumph lasts only a few seconds as Asami pushes her back against the tiled wall, his grip tightening around her.   
  
“You should be punished. The data inside that disc was quite valuable. How are you to make up for it?”  
  
“Let go of me, you ass! Like I care about it. It’s not my fault it’s empty.” She squirms as Asami’s warm lips brush against the juncture of her neck and jaw. She knew exactly what sort of punishment he had in mind, and she wanted no part of it. “Didn’t you just say I was dirty? Hands off!”  
  
She could feel the bastard _smile_ against her neck. “Do you think I’ll let you go so easily?” he murmurs, and her _fucking traitorous knees_ go weak when he licks a hot, wet path from her neck up to the shell of her ear, and then suckles hard that _stupid stupid sweet spot_ behind it. “Don’t worry. I’ll clean you up.”  
  
 _Why does it always end like this?_ Her protests don’t really do much and in a few minutes she is on her knees on the floor, tied up with Asami’s tie to the dammed faucet, panting hard at the hot-hurt burn of Asami’s cock sliding hard and deep into her, his fingers teasing her nipples with hard twists and pulls, her whimpers as his thumb brushes against her clit sounding too loud in this confined space.   
  
He’s saying something about how she was something else, to endure Fei Long’s torture (was that…admiration? It couldn’t be). She bites her lip, fighting not lose herself into the delirious pleasure, to say something coherent. “Shut up. You’re just like him,” she manages to say between pants and intakes of breath, “using drugs and force to do things to–when I don’t want any of this–”  
  
She gasps when Asami abruptly turns her over to face him. She doesn’t flinch when she finds herself looking straight into cold eyes, but her stupid body _arches_ and her hips _pushes_ back against him like she’s a goddamed stupid insatiable _slut_ when Asami stills from his movements. Her face burn with shame as Asami lets out a wicked smile at her reaction. “Now _who’s_ saying they don’t want this? You’re a bad liar, Takaba; your body is too honest with what it wants.” He leans over and claims her mouth into a bruising kiss, swallowing down her moans as he begins to move again, harder and faster than before.   
  
She doesn’t quite remember what happens after that.  
  
Takaba later wakes up sprawled on Asami’s massive bed, sinfully soft sheets over her still-naked (and very much aching) body. Asami is sitting on edge, the foil packet of morning-after pills in one hand. “Take them.” His voice brooked no argument, and the look on his face said that he would gladly force her to take them by ramming them done her throat should she refuse again.   
  
“I told you its fine.” She sits up slowly (biting back a groan of pain, _ow shit fuck god_ her back hurts and she doesn’t even want to look at the mess that her wrists were), and swipes the pills from Asami’s hand and wordlessly takes the glass of water he hands to her. She looks down to avoid Asami’s intent gaze, suddenly feeling very stupid taking the pill, but she’s tired and hurting, and all she wants now is to get over this and get the fuck away.   
  
After taking the first pill, she shifts as far away from him as possible, pulling the sheets closer to cover herself. “I don’t know why you’re even insisting on this. Like you even cared the last time to bother with some sort of protection.” She flaps her hand at him in a dismissive gesture. “Anyway, even if I got pregnant with Fei Long, it’s not your business if I keep the kid or not. I–”  
  
“No.” Asami suddenly grabs her wrists in a tight grip, and hauls her closer, ignoring her curses of pain and anger, until they are almost face to face, with very little space between them, breathing in each other breaths. “I don’t like it when other people mess with my property, and make no mistake, Takaba, you are _mine_. I will not _allow_ a spawn of Fei Long to further taint something that belongs to me, whether you like it or not.”  
  
She recoils, inhaling sharply, shocked and terrified at his brutal arrogance, the absolute dominance and command in his voice, outraged at his branding of her as some thing of his to do as pleases. “You–” She looks into his eyes then, and shivers at his cold, unyielding gaze. _He’s not kidding; he’s really going to force me to–_ “You are a _disgusting BASTARD_ , who do you think you are to– _let me GO!_ ” She surged forth and struggled against his hold, trying to kick and get him off her, but he held her too well, and he was too strong for her. “It’s _my_ body, dammit, and you have _no_ right to–”  
  
Asami pins her down hard on the bed, and looms over her, leaning his body weight on her to trap her further. Takaba is breathing hard, her heart beating as it would burst from her chest, seized by a sudden, animal fear of _run run run_ until she was far and away.   
  
There’s no smirk on Asami’s face, only narrowed golden eyes and a humorless smile. Takaba absurdly finds herself thinking about jaguars she’d seen once in a nature documentary, and how they did not tolerate other males intruding on the females in their territory, and how much Asami looks like them right now, all coiled strength and danger.  
  
“I see I need to remind you again. You are _mine_ , Takaba, every part of you. In this world, I hold _your_ freedom in my hands, and it is within my _rights_ to ensure I am the only one you will ever have. I won’t tolerate anything, or _anyone_ , encroaching and interfering on what belongs only to _me_.”   
  
“ _Fuck you_.” With a sudden burst of energy, Takaba manages to free one leg and kicks Asami–  
  
–who quickly dodges it, and then, with brutal efficiency, rips the sheets from her body.  
  
Asami takes her again, impaling her with hard and deep thrusts, possessive fingers holding her with bruising strength. Takaba fights back as much as she could, biting hard and scoring bloody lines on his back as she struggled to keep herself from drowning from the onslaught of _pain-pleasure_ , from giving into the madness of letting Asami possess her completely as he showed her just how much he knew and owned her body, a slave that obeyed without question to her master’s whims.   
  
“ _Asami_ ,” she choked out as she came undone again, her world going out in blazing white-hot heat. The last thing she remembers before she passed out was Asami’s eyes looking at her, gleaming with triumph and satisfaction.  
  
\------  
  
After that, Takaba avoids Asami as much as possible, to the point of not following stories that could lead her to crossing paths with him, strong though the temptation to get something to bring him down. She doesn’t want to be further involved with a man so amoral and as despicable as Asami, the antithesis of what she _believed_ in, of her _profession_.  
  
So, really, it was an act of incomprehensible _stupidity_ that when their paths _did_ cross again by accident a week and a half later, the first thing she did was _get into his fucking car_.  
  
It all spirals out of her control from then.  
  
\------  
  
Takaba took three more home pregnancy tests of different brands at different locations and times, careful to follow the instructions to the letter despite her shaking hands and the heavy thudding of her heart. Each test took another eternity as she waited for the results.  
  
Still positive. All of three them.  
  
“They could all be wrong,” she tells herself, her voice loud and unsteady, “they’re not really all that accurate and I could have made a mistake so– _dammit!_ ” She leans against the toilet walls, hand over her mouth. The sick feeling in her stomach gets worse, and she takes a deep breath, willing the rising nausea to go down, and trying to calm herself so she could consider her situation more carefully. This was not the time to get into hysterics.  
  
Her third pregnancy scare is rapidly becoming her worst.   
  
It takes a great deal of several deep breaths before she could gather her rapidly deteriorating composure and just focus and _think._   
  
So what does she know by now?   
  
She rattles out the facts and ticks them off in her head. First, judging from the test results and her symptoms and the changes in her body, she _could_ be pregnant. Second, because the last time she had her period was almost three months ago, she doesn’t have any idea how long or when did she get pregnant, though it’s highly probable that been expecting for a while now. Third, since she had sexual intercourse with two different men at that time frame (one of which was nonconsensual), she is not sure who the father is, but she _could_ narrow it down to two people: Asami or Fei Long.   
  
_If the child’s is Fei Long’s, Asami will force me to get rid of it, he’d said as much the last time_. That was hardly a reassuring thought. Then, quite possibly, Asami would do his very best to kill the head of Baishe — he would not be so merciful this time.  
  
If the kid was Asami’s, well. That. That was something she wasn’t quite so sure how that would go. Asami never struck her as someone very paternal, or interested in having children. Would he force her to get rid of his own blood if it proved to be unwanted and inconvenient? Would he kick her out and left to fend for herself? Takaba honestly doesn’t know.  
  
As for herself, she wasn’t even sure she would want to keep this child.  
  
In any case, the only way she could find accurate answers to some questions about her condition was to get herself checked by a doctor. Which was easier said than done, because Asami has eyes and ears everywhere, and Takaba didn’t really want him finding out about this too soon. _Not yet. Please don’t let him know yet._ It all feels like everything is slipping out of her control, and she doesn’t want that.  
  
\------  
  
In the end, Takaba goes to the doctor. Because, she reasoned to herself, sooner or later, she’s going to have to, and even if she puts it off, sooner or later she’s gonna start to show, and then Asami wouldn’t need a doctor to find out what’s different about her. Might as well get over it and get the facts right before she made any decisions and faced Asami.  
  
It must have been a slow day, as there weren’t many people at the doctor’s office when she got there, just two obviously very pregnant women. She gave the receptionist a false name (Katsura Megumi), lied about not having insurance, and then was eventually directed to a nurse to be weighed and measured, her blood pressure taken. As she waited to be called, Takaba did her best to make herself as unremarkable as possible, and ignored the curious glances the two other patients sent her. No doubt they were busy concocting some sort of sordid stories why she was here.  
  
The doctor herself was a sweet-faced, open woman about her mother’s age, who greeted her warmly when she was ushered in and tried to make her feel at ease with a bit of small talk, to which Takaba responded with brief answers. After settling down, the questions began.  
  
Some were easy to answer, some difficult. Takaba matter-of-factly told her about the positive home pregnancy test results, her missed period, her use of contraceptives and her irregular cycles, her symptoms so far, and her and her family’s brief medical history. Takaba didn’t tell the doctor her concerns about the paternity, or that she’d been sexually assaulted in the past.  
  
She took blood samples and made Takaba pee in a cup for tests, and then she made her lie down the examination table for the pelvic exam. Though Takaba had been warned and expected it, the probing still made her a little uncomfortable, and she bit her lip at the cold intrusion.  
  
“Well, Katsura-san,” the doctor, Sakata-sensei, said after she finished, looking down at her with a kind smile. “It appears you are pregnant.”   
  
Takaba stared at her for a moment, struck numb. _Pregnant_. Then she took a deep breath, trying to calm the rising panic. “Oh,” she manages to say, her voice a thready whisper. _Oh fuck._  
  
The doctor’s eyes flickered at her response, but her kind smile didn’t falter. “We’ll need the results from the lab to be sure, but based on my initial examination and the information you provided, you are pregnant, for quite a while now. We’re also doing an ultrasound for further confirmation and so we can be sure how far along are you. Is that all right?”  
  
 _No!_ Suddenly, she doesn’t want to have an ultrasound, to see a visual _proof_ of the truth. She wasn’t ready. Not yet. But she mechanically nods her head all the same.   
  
The ultrasound equipment gives her a bit of a pause ( _she’s going to stick that thing into me? Oh my God_ ), and she spends the first few seconds lying numb, legs drawn up and spread open, forcing herself to not to move too much and be calm and comfortable, and not outright bolt and run away from it all.  
  
“Here we go.” She winced a bit at the intrusion, and then, despite her initial reservations, turned to the monitor. She was going to see it anyway. Might as well be now. Never let it be said that Takaba turned away from her troubles. She would face this head on, with eyes open.  
  
There isn’t much on the screen at the first few seconds, just black and then grainy bluish-gray around a dark hole, and then, slowly, a bean-shaped blue-gray mass forms in the middle of the darkness. There’s a breathy, _whooshing_ sound, followed by what it seemed like the soft pounding of a galloping horse. “The sound you’re hearing is the fetus’s heartbeat. Congratulations, Katsura-san. You’re pregnant.”  
  
 _Oh_.  
  
The sound drowns out the rest of the doctor’s words into fuzzy white noise, and fills her ears (and her heart), strong and loud for something that seems to be so _tiny_.  
  
 _Oh_.  
  
The image starts to blur, as if it were a fading dream, as reality starts to intrude, and there’s a sharp, stabbing pain in her heart as fear seizes her. _Please don’t let this kid be Fei Long’s_ , she prays suddenly, still staring at the shifting dark shape on the screen, her unborn child. She puts a protective hand over her belly. _Please. I don’t–I can’t–I won’t–_  
  
“–Katsura-san? Are you all right? You’re crying.”  
  
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Takaba laughs shakily, wiping the hot tears with the back of her hand. She hadn’t even realized she’d started to weep. She gave the doctor a reassuring smile, though she was far from reassured herself. “It’s just–it’s a little overwhelming.” And it truly is, the sudden warmth and wonder that caught her off guard when she saw her child, snug in her womb, alive, heart beating, and seemingly safe for now. She hesitated briefly before asking, “How–how far along am I? Is everything all right?”  
  
The doctor smiled again, then turned back to the machine and pressed some buttons, glancing at the screen every now and then. “You’re about an estimated six and a half to seven weeks pregnant, Katsura-san. Everything seems to be going well, but we’ll have to wait for the test results and conduct more tests to be sure.”  
  
Takaba freezes at that. _Seven weeks_. She spent about three weeks held captive by Fei Long. Then two weeks in that island recuperating. And it has been nearly more than a month since she came back to Japan. Her mind went into a whirl of calculation. Six and a half to seven weeks. That meant only one thing.  
  
The child is _Asami’s_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The jaguar in a cello comment is lifted from a brilliant review in the _Sunday Times_ of the BBC series, _Sherlock_.


	4. Chapter 4

 

After her visit to the clinic, Takaba heads home. And by _home_ , she means the city of Yokohama. It is the easiest thing to board a train and come here, to her birthplace. Her parents are out of the country right now, but that didn’t lessen her sudden desire to come back to her roots. She still has the keys to the house. Besides, her grandparents would be in Kamakura, tucked away in their quiet little temple. She could always make her way there, should she feel too alone in the house.  
  
But she didn’t go to her parent’s place immediately. She spends hours wandering around the shops, down the roads and alleys she knew like the back of her hand. Now, here she is in Cosmo World, drifting among the cheery crowds, snapping pictures whenever something caught her fancy, as the huge Ferris wheel-clock loomed and spun above her. Darkness has not yet fallen, and the light was still good for outdoor shots.  
  
After a while, she makes her way to Ōsanbashi Pier to catch the sunset and take a picture of it. She did have a soft spot for sunsets. She loved the rich hues of the sky, bright and wondrous, the warmth of the rays of the swollen sinking sun, like her mother’s soothing touch. One of her earliest memory had been sitting in her mother’s lap as the sun set behind them, her father taking a picture of them as they watched. That picture had been in her father’s wallet for as long as she could remember.  
  
She makes good time, and reached the pier just as the sun was just starting to dip into the sea. Few people were there, and she quickly found a prime spot, near a somewhat precarious edge where one wrong step could lead her taking tumble to the cold autumn sea and the hard-packed sand and rocks below. She prudently stayed as far as she could manage to keep herself from falling. After a few adjustments, she trained her camera to the slowly sinking sun. As she looked at the sky and sea through her viewfinder, breathing in the sweet-salty sea air, she felt her spirits lifting. Everything was all right in the world.  
  
Then someone bumped into her. _Hard_.  
  
She loses her balance and teeters, and then her stupid foot slips, and soon she is falling and _shit fuck, no, baby, oh god no—_  
  
Strong hands out of nowhere grip her shoulders, steadying her, and then pulls her against a solid wall of a chest. She knows this touch, and that’s enough to send her heart careening against her chest. “Thanks,” she manages to say, not looking up, tamping down the urge to fight out of his grip and run.  
  
As if sensing her thoughts, Asami’s hold on her tightens, unwilling to let go. “Are you all right?” Asami murmurs. “You’re trembling.”  
  
Takaba takes in a shaky breath that she lets out as a huff of annoyance. “I’m fine. Who the hell was that?” She looks around, simultaneously trying to spot the culprit ( _culprits_ , it turned out, a bunch of roughhousing kids) and distract herself from Asami’s presence (as if that’s possible, but she could try).  
  
“You should have stayed farther away from the edge,” Asami says, a hint of a rebuke in his voice.  
  
“I _did_. I just didn’t expect to be knocked over by some stupid idiot! It’s not my fault!” He still has not let go of her. Takaba takes another deep breath to calm herself down, and finally, looks up to Asami. His face is as expressionless as ever, revealing nothing. It makes her nervous. It makes her want to _punch him in the face_. “What are you doing here?” she asks.  
  
“Taking you home.” Alarm bells ring in her head. Not that this is unusual behavior in itself. Asami has the habit of ‘picking’ her up when she was out and about. She didn’t know if it was out of paranoia because of what happened in the past or if Asami just liked pissing her off.  
  
“I can go home on my own.” Not that she plans on going back to Shinjuku right now. But she didn’t need to tell Asami that.

Asami just gives her his usual “If you don’t come with me, I’ll throw you over my shoulder and carry you to the car like a sack of potatoes” look. She throws him an exasperated look. “Fine, I’ll come with you.” The urge to flee is still strong, but she’s always been good at ignoring them (and really, how far could she run from Asami at this point?), and everything seems normal so far (well, as normal as it comes with Asami) and she has yet to note any sort of truly alarming behavior from him.  
  
“Just wait a moment,” she adds. Before Asami could say anything, she turns back to the sunset, and takes a single shot of brilliant sky and the sinking sun, the world awash in beautiful hues of reds and oranges. _Perfect_. When she turns back to Asami, she gives him a cocky grin. “Now let’s go.”  
  
They don’t talk on the way back. Halfway to the car (it’s the long sleek Mercedes, which Takaba is sure is all kinds of bulletproof), Asami lets go of her. She could still the heat of his gaze, though, making the hairs on the nape of her neck stand up. Kirishima opens the door for them, and, after a brief moment of hesitation, Takaba gets in, and Asami slides in after her, and gives her a curious look that she ignores.  
  
She stuffs herself against the window, eyes trained outside. Her stomach seems like it has tightened itself into an intricate knot, but at least she does not feel nauseous, although she has an amusing image of barfing on Asami’s pricey clothes and shoes. _The look on Asami’s face_. She giggles quietly at the thought. “Something funny, Takaba?” She looks over her shoulder to Asami and shakes her head, smiling. “Just remembering something.”  
  
As the car starts to move, she leans  back  on the window and sighs, closing her eyes.  
  
When Takaba opens her eyes again, she found herself in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room. She bolts up in shock, flinging back blankets and a pillow, and looked around wildly, pulse racing. _Where the hell—_  Asami is nowhere to be found in the rather large room. She glances down and found that she was still wearing the clothes she had on earlier. She puts a hand in her stomach, suddenly feeling queasy. _Calm down_ , she tells herself as she took a deep, calming breath, and then swung her legs down the bed.  
  
The floor is lushly carpeted, and it tickles her bare feet. _At least I didn’t wake up naked like last time_. She is about to stand up and head for the door when it swung open, revealing Asami, who looked liked he had showered and changed to more casual clothes. “You fell asleep in the car,” he tells her.  
  
“Oh.” She must have been thoroughly exhausted from everything that happened today for her to drop off like that. “Thanks,” she mutters. She tries not to think too hard of Asami carrying her (probably bridal style, or over her shoulders like a sack of potatoes as he had threatened) into the bed. She looks around again. Blinds are drawn on the room’s windows, letting her see only enough to determine it is already evening.  
  
“Where are we? Are we still in Japan? Or have you carried me off to some tropical island again?” She tries to keep her tone light, but inside, she is in near panic, her imagination going wild. God, she should have really known better than to get into Asami’s car.  
  
“We’re still in Yokohama,” Asami replies calmly, “in one of my houses.” He then sits on the bed just a foot beside her, his eyes narrowing into golden slits as he regarded her. His fingers brushes back a stray lock of hair from her face. “You seem more skittish than usual, Takaba. Is something the matter?”  
  
 _Fuck_. Feeling trapped, Takaba stares back at Asami, mind going a hundred miles per hour to find a suitable excuse. “I’m just a little wary when waking up on unfamiliar beds in unfamiliar places. Bad past experience, I guess. Why are we here?” Because they could have just gone back to Shinjuku, to Asami’s place. The drive wouldn’t be that long.  
  
“I have some business to attend to in the city. _You_ , on the other hand,” Asami raises one brow, “you don’t have work today, and there is certainly nothing of interest happening in the city right now to warrant you coming here. So why are _you_ here, Takaba?”  
  
Oh, he _knows_ , Takaba could tell by the way he is looking at her, with that smug, knowing gleam in his eyes. How he knows she could probably work out later with a clearer head, but not now. Oh, how she really wanted to punch him. Instead, she gives him a baleful look. Might as well get on with this. No sense beating around the bush.  
  
“I’m here because I’m pregnant, I’m confused and scared, and I needed to be somewhere I felt safe to clear my mind.” Her eyes narrows, and she straightened her back, her lips tightening into a grim line. “I’m sure you already know this, but I suppose I should say it to your face: I’m seven weeks pregnant, it’s yours, and I’m planning to keep my child whether you like it or not.”  
  
A flicker of emotion flashes across Asami’s face, too quick for her to identify. “And what makes you think I wouldn’t like you keeping the child?”  
  
“Because the last time we had any sort of talk about this, you weren’t exactly supportive or accommodating to my wishes or the idea of children, so forgive me if I’m a little cautious about bringing this up with you, or being a little worried how you’d receive this news.” It’s been many months since that night after he rescued her for the first time from Fei Long, but the memory of their conversation, his threats, the fear of what he’d do, is still fresh on her mind.  
  
She sighs, and ducks her head, rubbing the bridge of her nose, trying to ease the tension there. She is going to have a spectacular headache after this, followed by an equally spectacular throwing up session in the bathroom. In her anxiety, the queasy feeling has morphed into very bad nausea. “Look, if you don’t want to be a pa–”  
  
“Takaba,” Asami interrupts. He puts a hand on her shoulder, and tilts her chin up with the other. “You’re very pale. Is something wrong?”  
  
She blinks at the look of concern in Asami’s face, and then glances away as the queasiness returned. “No. Yes. I’m just–” she sucks in a breath and makes a weak, dismissive flapping motion with one hand. “I just need to lie down. I’m a little nauseous and tired from today.” She gives him a wan look, before trying to crawl back between the sheets. “I don’t even know why I bothered trying to keep you from finding about this. Seems like a waste of energy now.”  
  
“Don’t do it again, then.” To her surprise, he helps her settle on the bed, easing her into the mound of soft pillows, even tucking her in under the warm sheets. “Have you eaten yet?”  
  
“No.” At the dark frown on Asami’s face, she adds quickly, “Well, I had a few bites of crackers and some water. My stomach has been too uneasy the whole day for me to eat anything heavier.”  
  
“I see.” He fixes her a stern look. “Stay in bed. Don’t move.” Before Takaba could sarcastically retort that she may have to leave the bed to throw up, Asami leaves the room.  
  
 _Well this has taken a weird turn_ , Takaba thinks as she sank into the bed. The nausea has receded a bit, though she could still feel the tension in her body.

When Asami comes back a few minutes later, he has a plate of sliced apples (with the skin on, which was how she liked it) and a glass of milk with him. She eyes the milk suspiciously for a moment before taking it, figuring if Asami did really want to do something to her (like drug her), he could have done that earlier while she was asleep. “Er, thank you.” She places the apples in front of, her over the pile of blankets, and takes a careful bite of one slice.  
  
She eats the rest in comfortable silence, though she felt a little strange with Asami watching her as she munched on the apple slices. It is like that time in the island, after she’d begun to recover from her . . . near drowning, when he’d been particularly attentive to her (and she isn’t just talking about the sex), ensuring she was all right. As she finishes off her glass of warm milk, Asami says, calmly, “The child is mine as well. I don’t intend to let you raise it on your own, or to be excluded from its upbringing.”  
  
She swallows down the last of her milk, gripping the glass hard as she lowers it. This is one scenario she hadn’t given enough thought — that Asami would want _this_. She licks her lips, and meets Asami’s piercing gaze. “What if I don’t want you to be part of our lives?”  
  
“Would you abandon your own child, Takaba?” Asami’s answering smile is far from pleasant, and the whisper of a threat in Asami’s question makes the hair on the nape of her neck stand up.   
  
“No, I wouldn’t.”

Asami takes the glass from her hands and puts it on the nightstand. Then he leans over her, trapping Takaba between his outstretched arms. The urge to bolt away and run hits Takaba hard, and it takes much of her will to keep herself from panicking. “I have no intention of raising our child without you. Do you think I would let you go so easily, Takaba?”  
  
Takaba stares at him, suddenly feeling helpless. She should have never feared Asami turning her out for being pregnant, or forcing her to abort the child. Of course Asami would want something to bind her further to him, and what better way to accomplish that through a child — _their_ unborn child? And now pull is stronger, the ties stronger and tighter.  
  
She shakes her head. “This isn’t the healthiest of relationships — if it could even be called a relationship. Not even the best environment to raise a kid.” Any sane person would have run. How many times have Takaba told herself this in the past few months? For all his urbane and charismatic demeanor, Asami is not _safe_. He is a ruthless bastard, and unapologetic for it. It should not feel okay to be with him, to entrust him with her life, much less her child’s. She and her child would be safer far from Asami, far from the darkness of his world.  
  
And yet, Asami is also the man who had saved and protected her several times, even if by all accounts he could not have and just let her rot, the one who told her to leave him and go somewhere safe after he’d been shot trying to save her, the one who made her feel so damn _alive_ , the only man who inspired such intense feelings in her. The man to whom, time and time again, she is drawn back to, captured by some irresistible force that kept her and her life bound in a tight orbit with his.  
  
She looks straight into Asami’s eyes. “I should run away from you as far as I could, cut myself from you and never look back. It would probably be the best decision in my life. In our lives.”  
  
Asami just smiles, almost gently, and it makes her knees weak, her heart beat faster even as her heart aches. _God, the things this man does to me_. Callused fingers touch her cheek, just as a protective hand covers her stomach. “But you’re not running, Aki.”  
  
“No. I’m not.” _I’m in too deep, bound too tight, gods help me_. She doesn’t close her eyes when Asami’s eyes smolder with possessive heat, bright with triumph at her words, nor does she turns away from them.  
  
Her hand curls into a fist around Asami’s shirt, and she tips her head back, looking up to him as she says fiercely, “So you better be worth this, asshole. Because I swear, if you fuck this up with us, I–” Asami kisses her then, hard and thorough, cutting her off her words, her air, and much of her rational, coherent thoughts, and soon she is dizzy and delirious, caught up in his arms, in the web this man has spun around her.  
  
(She should be afraid, and she is. And yet at the same time she feels as she did as she watched the sunset at the pier, that everything was right in the world.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope Asami’s reaction to the pregnancy was OK. I didn’t want it to be too…much. I figured he’d try to express it more with actions rather than with too many words. You’d probably see more of how Asami reacted to the pregnancy in the next chapters. Also, this isn’t a resolution of Aki’s anxiety over the pregnancy and the situation in general. It will come up in the future.
> 
> Yamane-sensei has mentioned that Aki’s birthplace is in Yokohama in Kanagawa Prefecture. It’s only a thirty minute or so train ride from Shinjuku, where Asami is based. Cosmo World is a theme park in Yokohama that has a Ferris wheel that doubles as a clock. My description of the pier, is, however, completely fake. You can’t fall into the sea there so easily, because there are rail guards EVERYWHERE.


	5. Chapter 5

Takaba wakes up cocooned in Asami’s warmth, held close against his body by one arm. One large hand rests on her left thigh, almost cupping her buttock. Her own arm is loosely wrapped over her still-flat stomach, over where her (newly discovered) unborn child lay, as if cradling it. 

Her head rests on his shoulder, tucked under the crook of his neck. Breathing in deeply, she takes in Asami’s scent; underneath the familiar musk of sweat and sex, he smells of air during lightning storms. It’s a heady, intoxicating scent, charged with danger and power — funny that it calms her down, and makes her want to snuggle closer, rather than frightening her. 

(But then, she’d always loved lightning storms.)

She bites her lip at the impulse to press herself against Asami’s warmth and she mentally shakes her head. As much as she wants to do that, she could feel her muscles ache at the thought of another round of sex. Because if there’s one thing she learned in living with Asami, it’s that the bastard is a light sleeper, and he really, really likes morning nookies. Besides, she really needs a bit of time alone to absorb what had happened yesterday. 

I’m pregnant with Asami’s kid, and I all but agreed to stay and raise the child with him. Maybe ‘a bit of time alone’ was a gross underestimation. She’d need far longer time than that. Try forever.

With carefully controlled breathing and movements learned from weeks of sleeping in Asami’s bed, she manages to extricate herself from Asami’s hold without waking him up. Fuck yeah, ninja! she exults, clamping her lips shut to repress a sudden urge to giggle. 

It’s early morning, judging from the buttery rays of sunlight that spills into the room through the slightly parted vertical blinds, just enough illumination for Takaba to see her surroundings and not trip over anything. She spends a few seconds trying to find any of her clothes before remembering with a blush and a curse that Asami had all but ripped and torn them off and out (including her underwear) last night. 

“Stupid asshole,” she mutters. After a moment’s hesitation, she picks up Asami’s discarded shirt instead and shrugs it on, buttoning it with quick, deft movements. Thankfully, it was big and long enough to cover her past her butt. Smoothing it down, she grimaces at the sticky feeling between her thighs and on her stomach, the ache in her back. She glares at Asami’s sleeping form, barely resisting the urge to smother him with a pillow. Gods know he deserved it.

Right. Enough of that. Shower first.

It takes only a few minutes for her to find the bathroom, and she’s relived to see fresh towels in the linen closet, though disappointingly no bathrobes. She blinks as she takes in the expansiveness of the room, with the shower and the his-and-her toilets and the huge whirlpool Jacuzzi, then shrugs it off, locks the door, and gets into the shower.

She takes only a quick, but careful one, with the water temperature to warm rather than her usual hot, as per her doctor’s advice. After toweling herself dry and after a moment of hesitation, she puts on again Asami’s shirt — it smelled clean enough (Takaba swears the man doesn’t sweat at all; his clothes always seemed so pristine even after he wore them the whole day. It’s just not right.). Later, when he’s awake, she’d ask if he brought any clothes with him she could borrow. Or, screw that, make him buy her clothes; after all, it’s his fault they’re ruined. 

After peeking into the bedroom and ensuring Asami is still asleep, she makes away around the house with quiet, cautious steps, looking for the kitchen (more out of habit rather than actual hunger), inadvertently exploring the house. 

The house turns out to be a somewhat old craftsman bungalow with a second floor (if the stairs were any indication), furnished with an eclectic mix of modern comforts and antique wooden furniture, done in earthen shades of browns and greens, from beige to chartreuse. The honey-colored wooden floors glows a bright, cheery shine as dappled sunlight from the windows fills the rooms. Why the hell would Asami own a place like this? Asami’s residence in Shinjuku is all cool modern and minimalist, shiny bright steel and chrome and rich dark leather and pristine whites, with the occasion small burst of bright reds and golds. This house is such a contrast to his personality. Maybe he bought it furnished like this from someone else and didn't bother to change it?

The kitchen and dining room adjoined each other, all furniture done in rich dark wood, furnished with wrought iron, burnished copperware and gleaming steel of high-end appliances. Takaba finds a canister of very good tea on the table, and immediately sets about making some. While waiting for the kettle to boil, she heads for the tall fridge (taller than she was, what the hell), and is relived to find that there is food in them. Taking quick stock of the contents, she judges there are enough ingredients in there for a traditional breakfast, but she isn’t up to cooking just yet, perhaps later after she’s eaten a bit. Her stomach is fine, but she didn’t want to risk upsetting it. 

Hmm. Maybe she could cook a bit of miso soup, just to warm her up. The doctor did say it could help with her infrequent nausea.

After gathering the ingredients in her arms (negi, seaweed, tofu, and stock), she shuts the fridge door with a push of her foot.

And looks up to find a shirtless Asami standing beside the fridge.

She yelps in surprise, clutching the ingredients close and taking a sudden, wobbly step back. Asami swiftly reaches out for her and loops a steadying arm around her waist, ensuring she doesn’t trip and fall. She looks up at Asami and glares at him.

“I didn’t realize pregnancy would make you this uncoordinated this early.” 

“And good morning to you, too,” she grumbles, resisting the childish impulse to stomp on his feet. “You surprised me, that’s all.”

“Is that all you’re going to eat?” he asks, eyeing the ingredients on her arms with disapproval.

To her relief, he eases his grip and lets her go to the kitchen counter to place the ingredients there. She glances over her shoulder, frowning. “I’m just starting to prepare breakfast. I’m not really that hungry, though.”

“You only ate apples yesterday,” he reminds her. “Do I have to force feed you, Takaba?”

“No! Don’t even try it!” She lets out a huff in exasperation. Asami being concerned how she eats is a bit weird, to say the least. “It’s fine. I’m just taking things slow. I don’t know if my stomach is going to act up again.” Placing a hand over her stomach, she says ruefully, “Not much use eating a lot if I just hurl it all back up. Anyway,” she adds with a shrug, “my doctor recommended miso as a good food to start with and settle my stomach.”

“Are you having problems with nausea now?” he asks, putting his hand at the small of her back.

She flinches at the touch, unused with this sudden…gentleness, and their rather casual talk about her pregnancy. What a change from yesterday’s tension, when Takaba was pretty much in panic mode and ready to bolt most of the time. Well, she still is today…but not so much.

She shakes her head at his question. “No, but I’d rather not take the chance. I have to go to work today.” She ignores the hard look Asami gives her at the word ‘work’, turning away from him and busying herself instead with the preparation of food and tea.

Of course, she should have known Asami would not take well to being ignored. The hand on her back moves, and in heartbeat, Asami is pulling her against his chest. Takaba immediately stiffens at the contact, and squirms to get away, hands pushing (half-heartedly) against his arm. “Asami!” she hisses. “I need to cook breakfast.” 

But Asami of course ignores her, and just tightens his grip, pulls her even closer and then — oh god — he puts one warm hand low over her belly. She gives a little gasp as she feels his cock hard and hot through the thin material of her borrowed shirt and his own pants. “When,” he says to her ear, his warm breath making her shiver both in nervousness and (involuntary!) arousal, “do you think you’ll start to show?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she snaps, flustered and irritated. “I’ve never been pregnant before.” Then she frowns in thought, sifting through her memories, of her parents’ tales of her childhood. “My mother didn’t show much until she was in her seventh month in her pregnancy with me.” She and her mother shared the same slender built and many physical features; it could be possible she would take after her in this, too. “A lot of people didn’t think she was pregnant and were surprised when she gave birth to me. Why do you want to kn–will you stop that!”

She could feel his lips curl into that smug, amused smirk of his against the side of her neck before he presses another kiss against that spot behind her ear, then nips lightly on her earlobe. “I wonder what you would look like, all swollen up with child.”

She rolls her eyes, unamused. “Fat and awkward, and–Asami!” she yelps, her voice dangerously close to a whine, when Asami cups one breast, his thumb brushing over a hypersensitized nipple, and then rolls it between at his fingers, placing sucking kisses along her collarbones that she is sure will leave marks. She renews her struggles, but to no avail. “But I’ve just cleaned up and taken a shower!” she protests, a rather desperate last-ditch attempt to stop him. “And the food!” Not to mention I have work!

“If you didn’t want this, you shouldn’t be wearing my shirt while half-naked.” She bites her lip to keep a moan from escaping as the hand on her stomach pushes the hem of the shirt up, and then drifts lower, leaving a trail of fire, past the tight curls. “Don’t worry,” he murmurs, breath scalding hot against the crook of her neck. “We can both get cleaned up and eat together after this.”

Ignoring her protests, he slides down further to the heat of her sex, parting the folds to find that little nub of nerves, ruthlessly teasing her with clever fingers until she’s bent forward, open-mouthed and writhing and whimpering in delirious pleasure. He takes his sweet time until she’s crying out and begging, please, Asami, please, before he slips them into her depths, finger-fucking her with hard, deep strokes. When he crooks his fingers just so, hitting that sweet, hidden spot within her, she comes with a cry, her vision going white.

Still shaking from her earlier orgasm, she barely resists when she’s pressed against the counter. Asami goes down on his knees, holding her up in place with hands tight on her, fingers digging deep into her curve of her ass, as he licks the hot trails of her release up the inside of her thighs, placing biting kisses as he does. Her fingers weaves through his hair, and she tightens her grip when his mouth ravishes her with slow, unhurried wickedness, and then quick suckling kisses and flicking, probing tongue and oh god, Asami!

Her memories get a little hazy after that. She remembers, though, Asami buried to the hilt in her, one hand tight around her wrists as he holds her arms over her head as he fucks her with sweet, agonizing slowness. Sunlight spills in dappled gold into the kitchen, warming the room, but it is nothing to the burning heat in Asami’s eyes as he looks at her, never permitting her to glance away.

(For a moment, she can’t breathe. All the oxygen in her lungs are consumed in the fiery conflagration in Asami’s eyes, and yet she has never felt more alive.)

\------

It’s almost high noon when Takaba does manage to get another shower and to prepare brunch, this time in newly bought clothes Asami had given to her moments ago. In normal circumstances, she would refuse to wear them, but seeing as she has no other clothes, she made an exception. It’s still unnerving, though, that Asami knows precisely what her sizes are.

After a rather hastily made brunch for both of them, Takaba finally gets to sit and eat and breathe. A quick call to her boss tells her that their meeting is moved up to late afternoon, so she isn’t going to be late. 

Takaba glances sideways at Asami, who sat to her left, calmly reading a newspaper. Today, he is without his customary breakfast cigarette. Come to think of it, she think idly, he hasn’t been having his morning cigarette for several days now; in fact, he hadn’t been smoking at all for nearly more than a week now. That’s strange. Why would he–

A suspicion abruptly enters her thoughts. Rapidly, Takaba goes over Asami’s behavior in the past few days, then back at how calmly Asami took the news of her pregnancy, and then looked around at the house again, this time taking with wiser eyes. When she turns back to Asami, he is regarding at her with an amused quirk of his lips, his eyes bright. 

“You haven’t been smoking for more than a week now,” she says slowly, still gathering her thoughts, “and this house doesn’t look lived in. It looks like it’s been newly renovated and furnished.” As she had noticed before, the house had a warm and cozy atmosphere about it, all the mix of dark and golden wood and soft earthen colors, like a house made for a family to live in. You can’t be serious. He couldn’t have– Her stare shifts into a full-out glare when it all comes crashing together in her mind. “How long have you known that I’m pregnant?” 

Asami doesn’t even bother denying it. “A week ago.”

“What?” Shock ripples through her body, her mouth falling open. A week before she found out? How the hell was that possible? 

Asami’s lips curl into a small, smug smile at her astonishment. “Do you really think I wouldn’t notice, Takaba?” One free hand cups her face, and then slides down to curve against the column of her throat in the familiar, proprietary manner he always does. 

Flushing, she shifts away from his touch, but is too late for her to keep him tangling long fingers through her still damp hair and pulling her into a searing, openmouthed kiss. “I know every inch of you—the color of your skin, the shape of your body, the way you taste.” His tongue and lips plunder her mouth ruthlessly, leaving no part unexplored. “The slightest change in your body is of great interest to me.”

“You couldn’t have just known from that,” she manages to say, panting for air. Her pulse is racing, the rush of blood loud in her ears. “You–” It’s not hard to imagine what Asami could have done. If he had noticed the changes, he would have found ways to confirm his suspicions — with or without her consent; she wouldn’t put it past him to have extracted blood from her while she was asleep or unconscious so it could be tested. “And you didn’t tell me, you bastard. How could you–”

“I had hoped you’d find out on your own, but I hadn’t expected you to be so oblivious.” He pulls her to his lap, easily overcoming her attempts to get away. 

Her already rising temper kicks up another notch. “I am not–” She stops abruptly and then takes a deep breath, and digs her blunt nails into his arms, forcing herself to calm down. She didn’t want a repeat of last night and her horrendous nausea. “Is this why you’ve been sabotaging every effort I’ve made to get my own place?” she asks instead. 

“Part of it, yes.”

“Asshole.” She’d been suspicious as to why she’d been rejected so many times, with the landlords having a nervous look about them, when it only took her a few tries before she found a new apartment. In fact, she had tried to confront him the day before yesterday about his interference with her apartment hunting, but he…distracted her. With mind-blowing sex. What is my life?

“And here I thought you did that because you liked my free housekeeping skills too much.” Another uncomfortable thought enters her mind. It’s an outrageous assumption, but not quite improbable. She makes a vague gesture to their surroundings. “Please tell me you didn’t just buy this house when you–for–”

This time, Asami’s self-satisfied smile is unmistakable. “You’re scintillating today, Takaba. Is this a side effect of pr–”

“Don’t be stupid,” she snaps. She bites her lip to keep herself from screaming. Asami knew she was pregnant before she did, and took the liberty of buying a house for her and her child. God knows what else he did concerning her that she has no idea about. The implications behind these acts are overwhelming, and leave her shaken to the core. Of course she knows Asami had no intentions of letting her go, even before the pregnancy, even accepted it to some degree, but this was just–it’s too much! “You are such a fucking asshole,” she hisses at Asami. 

“Am I?” Asami tightens her hold around her in warning, but when he spoke, his voice is calm, almost soothing. “Takaba, look at me.” He takes her chin in one hand, not allowing her to look away. “I know you have questions.”

“I want to know what are your intentions.” She takes a deep breath. She’s been avoiding this topic far too long already. “Regarding me. Regarding this unborn child. I want to know, Asami.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Asami doesn’t do things by halves. It actually gets worse. :|


	6. Chapter 6

 

She knows she’s been caught, and, true to her spirited nature, she is not about to go down without a fight. Asami could see it in her eyes, gunmetal blue in her anger and determination, in the way she bares her teeth when she speaks, her voice harsh, in the tension in her body, taut as a drawn bow, ready to bolt and act in sudden violence at the slightest provocation.  
  
He shouldn’t really be enjoying all of this so much, but he does. His Takaba is truly a sight to see, fierce in her fury. _Like a wild animal_ , he had thought then, that first time on the roof top, when without hesitation, she had leapt into the air, the tawny mane of hers whipping in the wind, sparks of fire in her eyes, looking fearless, untamable. How he had wanted to possess her then, to have her. It is still true now, even as she sits on his lap, glaring at him and demanding answers.   
  
“I have told you of my intentions, Takaba,” he replies calmly. He eases his grip on her, but still holds her close, his hand rubbing the small of her back in soothing strokes. As lovely Takaba could be when she’s distressed, in her undoubtedly delicate condition, it would do no good to upset her further.  
  
“Really? I must have missed something because right now, _I have no idea what your plans are, and_ –” She stops abruptly, and Asami could see her trying to rein in her temper, taking a deep breath, closing her eyes and clenching and unclenching her hands and then breathing out in a quiet hush of air. But when she speaks again, she sounds as if she’d swollen poison, strangling the air from her throat. “For all I know, you’re just going to shove me in this house with the kid, to be forgotten and remembered at your convenience. Is this why you brought me to this house, Asami, to dump me here?”   
_  
_Ah__. Asami tries not to smile at the image of Takaba as some sort of neglected stay-at-home wife. Even dressed in aprons or engaging in household chores, she never truly loses that wilding quality about her, the hints that lurking beneath all that apparent meekness and domesticity of a lamb is a temperamental hellion of a lioness. _But still a vulnerable one_ , he thinks, looking at her eyes, pupils blown wide, the slivers of fear in them, _for all her spitting and hissing_. “Is that what you thought this was all about?”  
  
She makes an impatient gesture with her hands. “ _I don’t know what to think about all this_. I’ve only known I’m pregnant for two days, while you’ve known for a fucking _week_. I’m scared out of my mind, because I know you’ll use this to keep me tied to you for as long as you want and you’re _succeeding_ , dammit!”   
  
“And why does that frighten you, Takaba?”  
  
“Why wouldn’t it? You already know why. I’ve told you yesterday.”  
  
“Just as I’ve told you what my intentions are. I have no desire of let you go.” Takaba is _his_ , always. He doesn’t think he could get ever enough her, of her fire, the intoxicating thrill of making that stubborn will submit to him and to her own desires. That, and the innocence and kindness she had that never seemed to waver despite everything she’d been through, a bright beacon of light in his dark world. Even Fei Long had found himself drawn to her, perhaps because of her warmth and unselfishness to even to someone who had greatly wronged her.   
  
Truth be told, Takaba didn’t belong in his dark, corrupt world. But Asami is not a good man, and takes what he wants at his pleasure, no matter what. He’s told Takaba as much, that morning at the beach. “Would you prefer that I let you go and leave you and the child be?” he asks her.  
  
“Don’t ask questions like that,” she snaps, dark mood vanishing as quick as it had come, morphing to one of irritation. “No matter what my answer is, it wouldn’t matter to you. But it’s not the letting go thing that bothers me, it’s–oh fuck this.” She breaks from his grip with a quick, powerful twist of the body, but doesn’t move away. Instead, she shifts so that she all but straddles his lap, skirt flaring. Head tilted slightly back, baring a throat marked with his kisses, she looks up at him, her eyes the color of storm clouds, the tips of her slender fingers heavy on his chest. “If push comes to shove, I can raise my child without you. It’s going to be fucking hard, but _I can do it_.”  
  
“But childbirth and parenting are things I’m not going to go through alone, not if you’re here. It doesn’t matter to me if you decide to forget me or push me aside at your convenience, because I can take care of myself, but I will not allow you to do that to our child. So if you’re not onboard with me in this, if you just intend to be a passive uninvolved sperm donor in the upbringing of this child, then I’m walking away.”  
  
“Will you?”  
  
“Oh, trust me. I will. And I _can_.”  
  
 _So the claws come out_. His lips quirk a little at the steel in her voice and in her spine, though he knows her words were no idle threats. And of course Takaba would be more concerned of others than her own well-being. “I see you didn’t listen to me last night,” he says. He rests his hand on her hip, the other touching her face before resting on her thigh. “I will ensure that you and the child are well-taken of and are safe, and I will not remain passive in the child’s upbringing. You have my word.”  
  
She stills for a moment, her expression softening for a minute, before she says with a snort, “If this is your pitch for reassuring me, I have to say I’ve heard better ones.”   
  
Asami only smirks at her retort. “I chose the house for its location.” The house is near enough to Tokyo for uncomplicated, quick travel, but far enough from the city’s bustle and excesses and the stress that came with it, the neighborhood quiet and peaceful. “Our previous residence is hardly a fit place for children, and it’s too well-known for your safety. I’ve no desire to open you and the child to such dangers.”   
  
Takaba presses her lips into a tight grim line at that, acknowledging his point, far too aware of such dangers. Good. It’ll be easier to ease her into the measures he’d have to take to keep them safe. That someone would _dare_ hurt her and his child is _unacceptable_ (he will leave them nothing but _ashes_ ). “Besides,” Asami adds, “your parents’ house is only a brief walk away from here. I thought you’d want them close by during the pregnancy.”  
  
Takaba blinks. “You–Wait, we’re near my parents’ place? How do you even know where my parents live?”  
  
“They’re about three blocks away.”  
  
“You didn’t answer my question, you–Oh. _Oh_.” She looks around again, eyes narrowing in consternation. “I think I know this house. I’ve been here before as a kid. When–”  
  
“I should have known that would be you,” Asami says with a snort. The house had been in shambles when he saw it, littered with debris and its walls filled with graffiti. But the structure was more than sound enough, and with the right people and amount of money, everything was finished within a week. “The former owner mentioned that some ‘brats’ sometimes trespassed here and vandalized the house. More of your delinquent past, Takaba?”  
  
“We didn’t vandalize anything. I sneaked in to take some pictures, that’s all.” She let out a huff of annoyance. “And sometimes I went here with my friends to hang out after skipping school. _Playing games_. Not smoking or drinking or having sex like what you’re probably imagining.”  
  
“Is that so?” A comfortable silence settles between them, and after a beat, Asami asks, “Do you like it?”  
  
“Do I like what? Skipping class? The house? The fact that I’m pregnant and will be stuck with you for a long, long while?” She tilts her head to one side, her lips curving to a wry smile. “I should ask you the same thing. Do _you_ like this, Asami?”  
  
The hand on her hip curves up to her waist, thumb brushing against her still flat stomach. He wonders, for a moment, if Takaba would ever understand just how much he wants _this_. “Yes.”  
  
“Of course you do.” He watches as she struggles with herself for a moment, bowing her head to hide her eyes and taking in a shaky breath, composing herself. “The house is nice, I suppose,” she finally says, looking up. “I’ve always liked it.” Now her eyes are the color of drowned irises, her fingers digging into his thighs. “When are we moving in? Because I want to make sure nobody messes with my cameras.”  
  
Asami _smiles_. “They’ll have everything moved here by later tomorrow, so the house should be ready the day after. For now, we’ll go back to Tokyo. I don’t want you tripping all over the place and injuring yourself while they’re moving in.”  
  
Takaba gives him a curt nod. “Fine.” She then pushes herself off his lap, but before she could get far, he wraps his fingers around her wrists. “I will still be staying in Tokyo from time to time,” he tells her. “But I _will_ come back here.”  
  
She stares at him for a moment, looking a little startled, but then she smiles back, bright as the morning sun. “Good,” she says with a grunt. “Now excuse me, I have to get to work.” Her lips curl into a frown at the look Asami gives her, and she tugs her hand away. She turns to face him fully, hands on her hips. “I do plan to continue working. I’m not going back to the crime beat, though, at least while I’m pregnant. I’m not stupid; I know how dangerous chasing down criminals would be for someone in my condition. In any case, even before this, I’ve talked to my editor, and we’ve agreed to shift me to life and style.” She shudders at words, spitting them out as if they were something vile. “Temporarily, until the whole thing with that celebrity dies down. Dammit, it’s been _weeks_ and those stupid rabid fans are still chasing me.”  
  
“And whose fault is that?” he teases.  
  
She gives him a withering look. “How very supportive of you. In any case, I’ve no plans of telling them about my pregnancy or letting them find out about it, so I’ll probably have to quit when I start to show, and do freelance work again.”  
  
Asami relaxes a little. At least Takaba is showing some caution and sense. He’d still have some of his men to keep an eye on her, as always. Once could never be too careful with her, and with her condition ‘too careful’ would probably the norm for her. He watches at the corner of his eyes as Takaba leaves the kitchen to go back and get her cameras and bag. Meanwhile, he pulls out his phone and starts making some calls.   
  
\------  
  
The ride back to Tokyo ia quiet one like yesterday, but with the difference that there is not so much tension as before, and Takaba sits close to Asami, rather than at the opposite end, as is her habit. At one point, Takaba even leans a little against him, head on his shoulder.   
  
“I’ll see you later,” Takaba mutters when they came to her stop. She is just about to clamber out of the car when Asami pins her against the tinted windows of the car, and before she could get a word out, kisses her.  
  
Kisses her hard, tongue sweeping possessively inside her mouth, plundering the sweetness, the taste of her. She gives a little gasp when Asami’s hands slide into her blouse, stroking her silken flesh, fingers ghosting even beneath her bra, caressing the underside of her breast. When they part, Takaba is panting, her face flushed. He’s hard against her, his erection straining against his pants, brushing against the inside of a bare leg. “You–”  
  
“When is your second visit to the doctor?” he calmly asked her, then bends over to nip her throat.  
  
For a moment, Takaba just stares at him, dazed. As her blush recedes, her wits come back. “Two days from now, in the morning,” she says with a ferocious scowl. Then she bites her lip, and, after a moment, asks, “Do you want to come with me?”  
  
Asami eases away from her, but not before trailing his hands against her thigh, smiling wickedly as she shivers from the touch. “Of course.”  
  
She looks startled once again, as if she didn't expect for him to say yes. “Fine.” Glaring at him, she smooths down her clothes before opening the door and stepping out into the street. She doesn’t look back as she heads to her destination.  
  
\------  
  
Asami knows, in the back of Takaba’s mind, there is the suspicion he deliberately set out to get her pregnant so she would be forced to stay with him. That certainly is not true. Up to a point.  
  
Since the incident in Hong Kong, he’d sought ways to bind her further to him. Getting her pregnant had occurred to him, though the idea put him off at first. He doesn’t dislike children, but he’d never had any desire to have children before, and raising them in the world he inhabited would not be an easy thing—they were unpredictable factors, possible liabilities. Takaba’s own reaction was another thing to consider; though he knew she adored children and got along well with them, it was not conclusive evidence she would take well to having her own child.   
  
So he set that particular plan of action aside, and went for other options. But then, weeks after they’d returned to Japan, Takaba started displaying symptoms of pregnancy.   
  
When the results of the tests confirmed his suspicions, despite all his previous concerns, it only took him a heartbeat to decide to allow this child into his life.   
  
It’s not an entirely sound, practical, or rational decision, but then, when it concerns Takaba and the emotions she invokes in him, rationality has very little place.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This is what the house roughly looks like](http://pics.livejournal.com/twistedsheets10/pic/0009gd41). [This is the kitchen](http://pics.livejournal.com/twistedsheets10/pic/0009f2xw), and [this is the master bedroom](http://pics.livejournal.com/twistedsheets10/pic/0009edqq) (smaller, though!).


	7. Chapter 7

 

It was almost (quite disturbingly) idyllic, the few days after Takaba found out about her pregnancy, how, after the initial chaos, everything settled down as it were before, and they went back to their daily routines.  
  
Except not quite.  
  
Now, they have a child on the way, Takaba is no longer in the crime beat, and Asami is possibly more of a bastard than before. And they are living together (this time, Takaba has no more excuses, no I-can-always-leaves — they are together, and for the long term; how has her mind not exploded from that she’ll never know) in a new (well, renovated) house, to raise what would eventually, if whatever gods out there are merciful enough, be a family.  
  
Family is a topic that often came up in their conversations. Takaba doesn’t ask much about Asami’s background, though she was certainly curious about them, her lover’s origins being a complete mystery to her despite all her previous digging for information. She has a feeling, though, that should she ask, all her questions would be smoothly deflected, and it would end with her distracted (with sex, most likely). She is also not naïve enough to think Asami would confide in her in due time.  
  
Takaba knows she’s at a disadvantage, because Asami knows so much about her, while she knows very little about him. But still, sometimes curiosity gets the better of her, and she eventually does gather the courage to ask, taking Asami’s earlier statement of her having questions as a sort of (flimsy) permission to ask him about himself.  
  
After the second check up with her doctor — and, no, she will never, ever talk about what happened on that second check up; she will forever erase that incident from her mind, so traumatizing it was (She will remember, though, the way her and Asami’s fingers touched during the ultrasound, when the image of their child was shown on screen, the brief brush of fingers, the warmth that flooded her body, knowing he was here with her) — she had asked him, en route home, “Do you have other children?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Did you ever plan to have them?”  
  
“Did you?”  
  
“I, well, uh, not now, but yes. Eventually. Someday. You didn’t answer–”  
  
“I had no plans of having children.” He’d been answering her earlier questions dispassionately, perhaps with a hint of amusement, but now his eyes darkened into burnished amber, with a piercing intensity that made her uncomfortably aroused. “Until you.”  
  
Her eyes went a little wide at that, her face growing warm. “Wait, what? What does that me–” She stopped and held up one hand. “OK, never mind, don’t tell me the answer to that. Forget I ever asked. I do not want to know.”  
  
“Really, Takaba?” His tone was teasing, but his eyes didn’t lose their heat. “In that case,” and in a heartbeat she found herself trapped in his arms, Asami pressing insistently against her, warm hands sliding up inside her skirt, “why don’t we start following the doctor’s orders now?”  
  
Things got rather incoherent for her after that.  
  
\------  
  
She doesn’t ask him what he would have done had she been pregnant with Fei Long’s kid rather than his. It would only be a pointless, hurtful, and vicious conversation, and Takaba didn’t want any of that right now. She has enough stress to deal with as it is.  
  
Besides, she already knows what his answer would be.  
  
\------  
  
Another conversation Takaba has been avoiding is the one with her parents. The one where she tells them that they’re soon going to be grandparents.  
  
“You don’t seem to be looking forward to telling them,” Asami says, then returns to his newspaper after he sees Takaba pick up her cell phone, stare at it for several minutes, then fling it back to the sofa beside him where she goes off to curl up and crush a cushion to her chest in a tight hug and sulk for the umpteenth time, another failed attempt to inform her parents about her pregnancy, which she has been trying to do for two solid weeks now.  
  
“Well, considering the facts of the matter, I am a little bit worried,” Takaba replies. “I mean, I am nine weeks pregnant, unmarried, without much of a stable job, and the father of my child is a cri–a businessmen of dubious repute. Surely they’re legitimate concerns, and would justify why I am hesitant about telling my parents of my condition.”  
  
Asami raises a brow, and his lips quirk to a small smile at her lofty, sarcastic tone. “Such grandiloquence. I didn’t think you were capable of it.” He turns a page, ignoring the heat of the glare she gives him, and then asks, “Do you want to get married?”  
  
She bolts upright, eyes wide and nervous, like a startled doe. “What?” The look of pure bewilderment on her face is priceless. “No! That’s not–I never said I wanted–oh forget it.” She huffs in annoyance. “I’m not worried my parents would reject me. My main concern is I’m just not sure how the hell I’m going to explain to my parents how I ended up from being a rookie photojournalist to a crime lord’s lover and now soon-to-be mother of his child.”  
  
“Do you plan to tell them everything?”  
  
Sighing, she replies, “Well, no, of course not. I would probably skip over some — no, several — details, but–” She sucks in a deep breath. “It’s hard to lie to my parents.” Lips curling to a small smile, full of begrudging pride, she adds, “If you ever get to meet them, you’ll know why.”  
  
“You don’t lie very well. I doubt they had much difficulty knowing if you’re telling the truth or not,” he says blandly. Takaba’s face is an open book, just as her body language; her emotions and thoughts are far too easily detected and predicted, which is why he could tell she is lying about not being worried about her parents’ rejection. “Your parents are probably very tolerant people, if they have such a problem child as you.”  
  
“I hate you.”  
  
\------  
  
Later that night, when Asami is asleep, Takaba, quietly padding into the kitchen and sitting on a stool, screws up enough courage to call her parents.  
  
They would be in Portofino, Italy right now, vacationing quietly in some posh resort — at least, she hopes so. Her parents had a knack of getting into trouble, like that one time her Dad was nearly gored by a rampaging bull in Pamplona, Spain when he was trying to get a closer shot of it.  
  
She presses their number on the phone with heavy fingers, as if they were tipped in lead. Waiting for their phone to ring felt like an eternity. When it does ring, the ringback is loud and clear in the hush of the night, but not quite loud enough to drown the heavy thudding of her heart against her sternum.  
  
“Kitten.” Her father’s warm, gruff voice is low and amused, full of affection, calling her by the family nickname. “Checking if we’re behaving?”  
  
For an instant, everything that happened so far overwhelms her, a huge tidal wave of emotions pulling her under, leaving her without breath, without the capability of speech, and she’s seized with the need to cry, to ask for her father to _come home_ and take her in his arms and keep all the bad things away, just as he did when he was a little girl, when she was having bad nightmares, as he did years ago, when he told her he was sorry, and that it was not her fault.  
  
“Aki? Aki? Are you still there? Is everything all right?”  
  
But she’s not a little girl anymore. Shaking herself mentally, she smiles tremulously, takes a deep breath and speaks, her voice calm. “Hello, Grandpa. How are you doing? Is Grandma with you?”  
  
\------  
  
It went better than she expected. Her Dad even joked, “Is this an immaculate conception?”, which of course it was not, but Takaba didn’t elaborate on that. Her Dad and Mom were both very supportive and happy (“You know you will always have our love and support, no matter what, don’t you? Well, it’s true then, and it’s true even now and always. So don’t cry. We’re her for you.” Takaba cried even harder after hearing that.), if a little worried (“Are you all right? Everything okay with you and your baby? Do you need anything?”) and more than a little surprised (“I had no idea you were dating anyone.”).  
  
(A fucking understatement on both counts. Her mother _bawled_ at the news. _Tears of joy_ , she said. _Her little Kitten, all grown up_. She is probably designing a nursery room in her head already, if not on paper. Her father is probably ruining the carpet with his pacing.)  
  
Her parents then decided to cut short their trip and come home immediately to check on her, despite her protests (“Don’t be silly; you’re our priority. We can always take another vacation. Italy will still be here...if its economy doesn’t default, that is.”). And when she finally told them about Asami being the father of her child, they decided they want to meet him, too.  
  
Her parents phrased it politely enough, but she could feel their enormous curiosity even thousands of miles away. She can’t really blame them. They’re parents; it’s only natural they get curious about the man who is their daughter’s lover. But the moment she told her father Asami’s name, he was silent for a moment, and, in unusually strong language, asked to meet him.  
  
The possibility that her Dad could know what Asami’s line of business is, or even get an inkling of what happened to her in the past few months, is just…something she doesn’t want to even contemplate. That alone was enough to trigger her into nervousness, and with it came her nausea.  
  
Asami had awoken to her vomiting in the bathroom, and spent an hour or so holding her up as she continues to hurl on the sink, one large hand holding back her hair from her face to keep it from getting soaked in bile. They must look absolutely ridiculous right now; Takaba would have laughed, if she could.  
  
He carried her to the bed (bridal style, what the hell), and Takaba was too drained to protest, instead babbling to him about what happened during the phone call. Sternly telling her to not stress herself too much, Asami tucks her under the warm sheets, then cuts of her retort with an almost-gentle kiss, before slipping in beside her, leaving her stunned.  
  
 _Is this real life?_ she asks herself. But despite her worries, she sleeps without interruptions, lulled by the warmth beside her.

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

Asami has seen Takaba’s parents in pictures, known about them from the dossiers he has.  
  
Her father, Takaba Aishiro, was born in Kamakura, the only child of a Shinto priest and priestess. Tall, athletic, with black curly hair edged with silver, the man is a photographer like his daughter, though he prefers travel and slice-of-life photography. He _was_ previously in the crime beat, and even once, as a rookie, being sent to very briefly cover the Vietnam War (a last-minute replacement after his paper’s photographer died from stepping on a landmine), but he shifted to his current pursuits eight years ago.  
  
His wife, Tsukiko, Takaba’s mother, was from an old artisan family in Kyoto. Barely more than eighteen when she eloped with and subsequently wed Takaba’s father — a minor scandal at that time, as she had been betrothed to someone else — Takaba’s mother is eight years younger than her husband, and is a painter of some renown, though lately she has become an art conservator. All her pictures show her to be an elegant, attractive woman, with her and Takaba sharing many physical features, from their slender builds to their long tawny hair.  
  
Takaba has always been uncharacteristically taciturn about details about her family. But then, she has always tried to keep things about herself from him (She never succeeds.). Occasionally, she would open up and mention some family anecdote or fact, most of which he already knew. Over time, and with her pregnancy, however, she became more willing to share, and Asami was equally willing to indulge her.  
  
“When I turned twenty and moved to Tokyo, they both got bitten by wanderlust and decided to travel around the world,” Takaba says, explaining why her parents had been abroad as they finally head over to her parents’ house in a car (which sparked an argument, with  _for fuck’s sake, Asami, they’re just three blocks over, we can walk_ , but Asami was adamant, and so were his men, and so she was outvoted) for lunch. “Sort of combining a second honeymoon and work, I guess. They come back here after two months or so of traveling, stay for a few months, and then head out again and have all sorts of crazy adventures.”  
  
“I’m surprised you didn’t join them.”  
  
She makes a face. “I don’t want to be a third wheel to my parents.” Then she adds, “I do want to travel around the world and take photos like my Dad, but I’ll save that when I’m older.” Her lips curl to a smile, eyes bright with determination. “Of course with a kid that might not be so easy, but–ah, here we are.”  
  
The Takabas’ house is an old walled-and-gated two-storey Victorian, originally the home of a British trader and his staff back when Yokohama had been one of the few ports open to foreigners. It went through numerous owners before her parents bought it at a bargain price (“My Mom is a demon at bargaining. The real estate guy never stood a chance.”). Opening the wrought-iron gate, Takaba’s eyes light up at the sight of the man ahead of them.  
  
“Dad!” Takaba’s father is standing near the door, under the arbor, dressed in a striped beige and black jumper and dark jeans, an air of the outdoors about him, his skin a dark tan from hours spent under the sun, curly hair ruffled as if the wind had been rifling through it. He grunts when his daughter all but slams into him, but his smile is warm and gentle as he returns his daughter’s fierce embrace, his blue eyes (the same shade as Takaba’s, Asami notes) dark with affection as he kisses her forehead and murmurs something too indistinct for Asami to catch.  
  
When he turns to Asami, he straightens, his eyes flickering into steel blue. Takaba, still in her father’s arms, tightens her grip on her father’s waist in wordless reassurance and plea for restraint, and then, to Takaba’s father’s (and Asami’s) surprise, slips away from his grasp to stand beside Asami. “Dad, this Asami Ryuuichi. My father, Takaba Aishiro.”  
  
Asami notes with amusement that Takaba’s eyes go a little wild when he bows to her father. The older man bows smoothly back, and then locks gazes again with Asami, assessing him. And then, he says, deadpan, “Please take good care of my daughter. She can be difficult, but she has a good heart.”  
  
“Dad!” Takaba scowls fiercely at her father in outrage, even as she leads them into the house, where it is warmer. She gives Asami a look, as if daring him to speak out. “I am not difficult.”  
  
Grinning, Takaba’s father reaches out and tweaks her nose. “That’s not what all of your teachers said.”  
  
“Where’s Mom?” Takaba says quickly, trying to change the subject.  
  
“Your mother is still cooking in the kitchen. You came much earlier than we expected. I hope you enjoy Italian,” he says to Asami with a wry smile. “My wife has taken to Italian cooking when we stayed there and she has–”  
  
“Wait, stop, why is Mom cooking?” Takaba asks, a look of dawning horror on her face. “Why are you letting her?”  
  
Her father gives her an awkward pat on the shoulder, looking sheepish. “She’s gotten much better. She took cooking classes while we were in Italy, and passed with flying colors.”  
  
“Really?” She cast a dubious look toward where the kitchen probably is. “The last time she ‘got better’, we had to refurnish much of the kitchen. You do remember that, right?”  
  
“Well–”  
  
“I see you didn’t waste any time making false accusations about my cooking,” a woman says, her light, teasing tone taking the sting from her rebuke. Dressed in a dark blue apron over a black dress, her tawny hair tied to a neat bun, Takaba’s mother walks over to them, smiling. “And in front of a guest, even,” she adds, looking at Asami benignly, “adding insult to injury. How unkind.”  
  
“Unkind? To whom? To you or the guest?”  
  
Takaba’s mother laughs at her husband’s quip, unruffled. “To me, of course.” She turns to her daughter with a sweet smile, murmuring, “Hello, Kitten. How have you been?”  
  
“We’re fine,” Takaba says with a slight smile, but makes no move to touch her mother, staying firmly by Asami’s side, such a contrast to her earlier effusive greetings to her father. Takaba turns to Asami and introduces them, saying, “This is my younger sister, Takaba Tsukiko.”  
  
“Flattery won’t help you, my dear,” her mother says, though the pleased look in her eyes belies her words. “Welcome to our home, Asami-san,” she greets Asami in cool, dulcet tones. Her smile is charming, but her slate gray eyes were subtly probing, studying him for a brief moment before lowering her gaze and then turning back to her daughter to ask her a few more questions about her condition. This time, they touch, with Takaba’s mother’s fingers brushing against her daughter’s stomach and Takaba tucking back a stray hair behind her mother’s ear.  
  
Though she and Takaba looks alike (indeed, if he ever wondered what Takaba would look like when she was older, he need only to look at her mother), Takaba Tsukiko’s highbred features are sharper, fine boned and narrow, almost inhuman and otherworldly. Asami is reminded of tales of old — of fox women, _kitsune_ , and the snow woman, _yuki onna_ — looking at her. Her face holds none of Takaba’s kindness or warmth, though Asami could see where Takaba gets her preternatural wildness from. “I’m sorry you’ve caught us woefully unprepared,” she says, facing Asami again. “Is the anything I could get you in the meantime? Tea, perhaps?”  
  
“No, it’s we who must apologize. We came too early. Your daughter has been very anxious for us to meet. I didn’t want her to overexert herself further, so we came as fast as we could,” Asami replies smoothly, putting a hand behind over the small of her back.

  
“Ah. How very like her. Well,” Takaba’s mother says, sounding brisk and businesslike. “Lunch won’t be served until several more minutes. Kitten, why don’t you show Asami-san the studio and around the house? And no, you will not help me in the kitchen. That’s your Dad’s job.” She fixes a stern glare at her daughter, who looks ready to balk at her order. “Too many cooks spoil the broth, the saying goes.”  
  
\------  
  
“That went better than I expected,” Takaba mutters to herself when her parents were out of sight and earshot.  
  
Asami smirks at her. “What did you expect, Takaba?”  
  
“I’m not really sure,” she replies, frowning. For a moment at the threshold, she really thought her Dad was going to do something to Asami. Her father is welcoming enough, but there is a wariness about him that seems to be more than the usual fatherly disapproval of the man involved with his daughter. He knows something, but isn’t showing all his cards yet, or confronting her or Asami over it. It wouldn’t surprise Takaba if he made inquiries about Asami. Her father had worked for the news beat in the past, and probably had old contacts he could talk to. _Shit._  
  
And her mother…she’d given up long ago trying to figure out what her mother is thinking. She’s been gracious enough — charming even. But Takaba has seen the way she looked at Asami, as if he were a particularly interesting artwork she wanted a closer look at and to study, and that made her more than a little nervous.  
  
Pushing down her worries, she says, a little abruptly, “The studio is this way. That’s where we put up most of Mom’s paintings and sculptures. My Dad puts up his photos in his office upstairs.” To her relief, Asami follows her without comment through the narrow hall leading to the studio and the adjacent darkroom.  
  
“Were in charge of the house in the past?”  
  
Takaba stops from sliding the studio door open and turns to Asami, raising her brows at the odd question, a little unnerved how quickly he deduced things about their family dynamics. “I suppose.” She shrugs. “I never really looked at it that way. I mostly did the chores.” Her father could get pretty preoccupied when he’s working with his photos, shutting himself in the darkroom for hours and forgetting to eat, though not as bad as her mother, who would sometimes lock herself in the studio for days to work, so it was often up to her to do the groceries, the budgeting, and the cooking and washing and cleaning and so on. She didn’t mind, much.  
  
“My mother is completely useless at domestic stuff, especially cooking.” She gives him a wry smile. “Hopefully, she won’t end up killing us all by either burning the house down or by poisoning. Which she nearly did before. Several times.”  
  
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Asami says dryly.  
  
Laughing, she opens the door, revealing the studio, where the bright midday sunlight floods in from the skylight roof and the picture window that frames the back garden, where the vivid reds and oranges of the fallen maple leaves carpeted the ground and the satsuki azalea bushes. She takes a brief step back from the rich, sharp smell of paints, breathing through her mouth. Grimacing and scolding herself for forgetting, she motions for Asami to stay put and reaches to the left for the switch to turn on the ventilation system. “Sorry. It can get a bit stuffy here sometimes. You can come in after a minute or so.”  
  
Her mother must have done some organizing and cleaning up earlier, as most of the materials were in their proper places rather than their usual haphazard chaos: brushes and pens in their holders or hanging on a rack, the paints stored in the taboret or in one of the cabinets. She smiles at the sight of 35-mm film cartridges containers stacked neatly against the wall in a cool corner — her mother put leftover mixed paint in them so she wouldn’t need to remix again (her Dad would complain she kept stealing the containers from him, and eventually bought her a box of it). Even her art desk is free of its usual organized clutter, clean and ready to work on.  
  
She turns to Asami and gestures to the walls, where paintings hung in display. “My mother’s works. Most of them are unsold, or those she likes to keep for herself. She keeps a lot of them.” Most of her mother’s subjects were people and nature — vibrant and intimate portraits and vivid, breathtaking landscapes. As a child, she loved watching her mother at work, marveling at how her mother’s hands made such magical images. She’d tried her hand at painting, but failed miserably (and got a gentle scolding for the messes she made); she did have an artist’s eye, or so her mother told her, so her mother would often ask her for her opinion, or she would sometimes use her to model poses.  
  
“This one is my favorites,” she says, pointing to the portrait of a man her mother saw in some military parade in Europe; her mother always had a thing for people with ‘weird’ faces, and the man caught her eye. He had unruly blonde hair and very thick, caterpillar brows over brilliant green eyes, scowling darkly, wearing the scarlet and gold stern finery of a military full dress, oddly handsome despite the broken nose and somewhat uneven features. His scarred, but elegantly long fingers held the hilt of a saber. Takaba liked it because of the expression on the man’s face, the ‘Don’t fuck with me or I will fuck you up’ aura he seemed to give (and yet her mother tells her he was the sweetest and most courteous man she ever talked to — such a fine gentleman, intervening and helping her when someone accosted her for sketching).  
  
“I think I prefer this one,” Asami says from beside her. She turns to see what had caught his eye.  
  
Propped up on an easel is an old painting of her, naked, curled up against a black panther while lying on red silk sheets. _Chiaroscuro_ , her mother called the technique she’s used, bold contrasts against light and dark, her pale skin and bright tawny hair bright against the inky darkness of the panther. She’d been so shy posing for this, her first nude one, and her mother captured it perfectly, her sweet, shy innocent expression, half-lidded eyes and red cheeks, against the quiet, potent menace of the panther.  
  
For a moment, there is an absolute silence in the studio. Then:  
  
“Please excuse me. I’m going to kill my parents. I’ll be right back after a few minutes.”  
  
Asami laughs, brief but genuine. Takaba hates herself for feeling pride (that she could make him laugh, even if it was at her own expense), and for finding that laugh attractive. “It’s an excellent portrait. Your mother is very good.” He steps closer to her, his chest almost brushing her back. “How old were you when this was done?” Asami asks.  
  
She doesn’t dare look at him, wary of what she’ll see on his face. “I was eighteen when she made this. This is just a draft of sorts for practice for something. I didn’t think she’d actually finish it.” She just knows he’s mentally comparing her and the painting, noting the changes — God, why can’t the earth open up and swallow her right now — no, not her. Asami. Asami and the dammed painting. And maybe her mother. Did she put this up on purpose?  
  
“I see.” She doesn’t flinch when he trails his fingers against the side of her body, though, as always, it sends a thrill shooting up her spine. “Do you think–”  
  
“No, Asami, don’t even think about it.” She whirls around to face him, her temper flaring when she sees the amused smirk on his face. “You are _not_ getting this portrait, and you are certainly _not_ commissioning my mother for any sort of art involving me or anyone naked. Just. _No_.”  
  
“It would look very good on the wall in my office.”  
  
“No!” Then she adds, muttering in a low voice, “I don’t see why you need it anyway. You already have the original.”  
  
“So I do.” The warm purr in Asami’s voice makes her shiver, and she takes an instinctive step back, only to find herself blocked by the painting. “Asami,” she hisses when he slips an arm around her, drawing her close. “What do you think you’re doing?”  
  
“So,” he says in that same, irresistible voice, “which way is it to your room?”  
  
\------  
  
All in all, it was a far more pleasant lunch than she had imagined.  
  
Of course, Takaba spent most of it in tenterhooks, because despite the casual talk and the actual edible (and very good) food, she could sense the heavy weight of tension in the air between her parents and Asami, the potent air around them ready to explode at the tiniest spark. Not only that, she was pretty sure her parents heard her and Asami doing… _that_ in her room (she tried to be quiet, but Asami would just _not_ let her), which is really such a stupid, juvenile thing to do but of course Asami, the possessive bastard, wouldn’t take no for an answer and of course she let him have his way. Even if they didn’t hear, they could probably see the red marks Asami left all over her neck that were not there earlier and figure out what happened.  
  
Thankfully, her parents, if they noticed, decided to ignore it.  
  
Takaba takes a small sip of her juice. Though her nerves and stomach are too unsettled for her to enjoy her food, she makes the pretence of eating, not wanting to appear too tense and cause concern. In between, she keeps an eye on the three, ready to diffuse the situation should anything get out of hand.  
  
Asami is in his best behavior, polite and attentive, even complementing her mother with her cooking. He and her parents did most of the talking, discussing and trading innocuous questions about trips abroad, art, bits of politics, even the weather. Her parents refrained from asking him more alarming questions, like asking _how did you meet_ and _how did you get together_ and _what do you do for a living_ , though Asami does mention he is a businessman and they met in one of his businesses he owned during work. Which was sort of accurate.  
  
To her relief, the talk eventually turns to her pregnancy, a much more comfortable line of discussion. “A summer child, is it?” her mother muses, when Takaba tells her when her due date is. “If you give birth on Tanabata and it’s a girl, Orihime would be a lovely name.”  
  
“I suppose. But I think it’s going to be a boy,” Takaba says before she could stop herself. All three look strangely at her. Takaba smiles nervously back. It is the first time she ever speculated out loud in company what the sex of the child would be. It didn’t matter to her whether the child would be a boy or girl, as long it came out healthy.  
  
“Oh? Is this maternal instinct?” her father teases her.  
  
She laughs. “Maybe. I just have a strong feeling it’s going to be a boy, that’s all.”  
  
Asami raises a brow and smiles at her, a strange look in his eyes that made her heart beat faster. “How sure are you about this?”  
  
“Well,” she hedges, and then, in a strange fit of mischief, she meets Asami’s gaze, grinning confidently. “I’m very sure. I’d probably make a bet on it, if that wouldn’t be wrong.”  
  
“I wouldn’t take up that bet,” her father advices dryly to Asami. He glances at her mother and they share a secret, private glance before he turns back to Asami with the wry smile he has when he’s exasperated with his wife and daughter’s shenanigans. “It’s the same with my wife. She knew Aki would be a girl even before the doctor confirmed it. It’s some sort of instinct they have that seems to be hereditary.”  
  
“But we did make a bet, which I won,” her mother says with a rich chuckle.  
  
Takaba looks at her parents with mock disbelief, laughing at the pained expression her father makes. “I can’t believe you made a bet over that. What was the prize?”  
  
Smirking, her mother replies, eyeing sideways her now-blushing father, “I’m afraid that’s a secret, Kitten. Now, does anyone want dessert?”  
  
\------  
  
Somehow, after lunch, Takaba finds herself alone with her Dad, helping out with the dishes (which she thinks she volunteered to do, despite protests — old habits die hard, and she was getting restless), while her mother is left in the living room with Asami. She didn’t know which situation is more alarming.  
  
She and her Dad spend a few minutes washing dishes, when her father asks, calmly enough, “Is he taking good care of you?”  
  
Takaba wonders how her Dad would react if she were to tell him all the things Asami did to keep her safe, or if there are enough words to describe just how Asami ‘takes good care’ of her (or if there are actual words she could use). “In his own unconventional way, yes,” she replies instead.  
  
“He is very unconventional,” he says mildly as he calmly stacks the dishes into the dishwasher, and he doesn’t need to say any more for Takaba to figure out his Dad knows about that side of Asami, the side that, even if it is just the briefest of glimpse, would cause any sensible father’s protective instincts to go into overdrive.  
  
“That he is.” She reaches for the paper towels, wiping her hands dry, not looking at her Dad. The silence between them stretches for several heartbeats, enough for him to get that she knows about that side of Asami, and that she accepts and understands what it all entails.  
  
“Do you trust him?”  
  
“I trust him to be himself.” It’s a flippant reply, but it is, in a way, an absolute truth. She trusts Asami to be Asami. It’s at simple and as complicated as that. She looks at her Dad full in the face and takes his hand, twining their fingers together. How she wishes she could reassure him that everything would be all right, and that they had nothing to worry about. But she could not. “Daddy–”  
  
“I didn’t think,” her Dad says, tightening his grip on her hand, “that you would stay with him if you didn’t trust him in some way. You wouldn’t be with him if you didn’t truly want this. Aki–”  
  
She holds up one hand, suddenly choked with emotion, her heart aching. She hates seeing her Dad looking so seemingly helpless and lost. “Dad, don’t. Just…don’t say it. I’m still having trouble admitting…that. I can’t even say that out loud. He doesn’t even know–” she lets out a frustrated sigh. “It’s all very complicated.”  
  
“It’s about to get even more complicated,” her Dad says with a sad smile. He touches her stomach, and then looks at her in the eyes. He seems so old then, with the lines of worry around his eyes. “Are you happy?” her father asks, touching her cheek.  
  
She lets out a shaky breath. Her father is asking all the hard questions, all at once. “I don’t know.” At her father’s stricken look, she adds quickly, “But I’m not…unhappy either. I suppose the right answer would be, ‘I’m adjusting’.”  
  
“Adjusting?” He cocks his head to one side, looking confused.  
  
“To him.” _To everything he stands for_. _To everything that he is._ _To whatever we’re heading now_. Wrapping her arm around her Dad’s waist, she says, smiling like an imp, “Come on. Let’s go back before they miss us too much.”  
  
\------  
  
“You are always welcome to visit us,” Asami says graciously to her parents as they escort her and Asami to the car, where Kirishima awaited to chauffer them home. “She needs company to keep her out of mischief.”  
  
“You may come to regret that offer,” her mother warns Asami with a smirk, “but thank you. I’m so glad you live near; so much easier to visit. Not that distance would stop us from visiting our little Kitten.”  
  
At the smirk, Takaba wonders if her mother and Asami had some sort of exchange. She makes a note to ask her mother later. For now, she embraces her tight, and kisses her cheek, grinning when she pulls back. “I doubt anything would stop you from what you want. Give me a call when you guys decide to visit, OK? I’m still working, so I may be out sometimes.”  
  
“Of course. I’ll try to keep your mother from going every day.” Takaba reacts with feigned horror at the idea of her mother being at the house everyday, and then laughs, and reaches out to hug her father fiercely.  
  
Finally, they slide inside the car, Takaba waving at her parents, who, for a brief moment, looked like they are letting their daughter go to the Devil himself. When they are out of sight, Takaba lets out a long sigh of relief, and slumps against Asami. For a few minutes, they stay like that, silent, and then, Takaba clears her throat, and says, “Thank you. For meeting with my parents. It means a lot to me.” She doesn’t look at him, afraid what he would see in her face, what she would see in his face.  
  
“Of course,” Asami says. “They’re very interesting people.”  
  
“Funny, that’s what they say about you. Among other things.” She doesn’t protest when Asami takes her into his arms, all but pulling her onto his lap. Though she is loathe to admit it, she takes comfort in that solid embrace after such a draining event. “Also, stop that.”  
  
He undoes the tight French twist, running his finger through her hair. “Stop what?”  
  
She snuggled closer to him. “Psychoanalyzing me. Us. My family, I mean. Which you’ve probably been doing the whole time you were there.” If there is anything she’d learned about Asami, it is that the man had exceptional observation skills. She wonders what things he picked up from being in her home and watching him and her family interact.  
  
“Psychoanalyzing?” Asami asks her, sounding amused. “Is this why you’ve been so resistant to telling me about yourself?”  
  
“You already know too much about me,” she retorts. _While I know very little about you_ , she doesn’t add.  
  
“I always try to know every little thing about you.” She snorts at his reply. “I didn’t know you were fond of Hello Kitty. If I had known–”  
  
Takaba groans. “You’ll never let me live that down, will you? I–“  
  
“Also, I am pleased,” Asami says suddenly in soft, but precise tones against the delicate shell of her ear, his breath almost scalding hot, “that you know to whom you truly belong.”  
  
Takaba stills for a moment, a chill shooting up her spine, and then slowly turns her head to Asami. She could see her reflection in the window: her face pale and taut with tension, her eyes a vivid blue, preternaturally wide — like a wild animal scenting danger in the wind, ready to flee at the slightest noise. “What?”  
  
He smiles benignly, even as he tightens his hold around her. “You weren’t worried your parents would reject you — you were worried your parents would disapprove of me.”  
  
“Of course I was worried about that,” she snaps, and tries to squirm free. How in the world does Asami figure out these things? “It would be awk–Asami, _let_ –”  
  
“You were afraid,” Asami continues, relentless, “that should your parents disapprove of me, you’d be forced to choose between me and your parents. And you would choose me.”  
  
Takaba stops struggling then, the beating of her heart loud in her ears. “You know,” she says slowly, voice curt, full of frustration, “you really suck at ‘don’t stress out a pregnant woman’.”  
  
Asami only smiles back, that sharp, predatory smile he has when he knows he’s won. Takaba barely resisted the urge to hit him. “Your parents seem to be very sensible people. I like them.”  
  
“You better,” she replies fiercely. “Unfortunately, they don’t seem to be very fond of you. I wonder why.”  
  
He places a warm kiss against the pulse on her neck. “I look forward to changing their mind.”  
  
\------  
  
The next morning, when Takaba goes to Asami’s office to get something she had left there a while back, she finds her nude painting hanging on the wall.

 


	9. Halcyon Days: Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this part: A series of interconnected one-shots (ficlets, mostly) of slice-of-life during Takaba’s pregnancy. Some themes were taken from/inspired 1sentence’s theme beta.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The stories are NOT quite in chronological order: they sometimes go back and forth during Takaba’s pregnancy.

**Walking**  
  
“So, what’s this all about?” Takato asks Aki as they, hands heavy with bags of groceries, ambled their way to Takato’s apartment, where Kou waited for them so they could have their hotpot party. Aki had called them up a few hours ago for a little impromptu get-together. “I have something to tell you,” she had told them, rather ominously.  
  
At his question, Aki spins around to face him, surprisingly graceful despite the load in her arms, and flashes him a quick grin, and says, “I’ll tell you later.”  
  
When later comes, they’re sitting under a kotatsu, busy eating their fill of the delicious hotpot Aki made for them. In between shoving mouthfuls of wagyu beef and Chinese cabbage, Aki casually says, “I’m pregnant.”  
  
There’s a moment of silence, punctuated only by the sound of the soup bubbling from the heat.  
  
Then bits of meat and vegetables go everywhere, followed by sounds of choking.  
  
“That’s gross,” Aki says in that same casual tone, as if she hadn’t just delivered such earthshaking news. She continues to eat unhurriedly while they gape at her, ignoring their no doubt shocked expressions.  
  
“But how is that possible?” Kou cries out, finally shaking himself out of shock. “You haven’t even been dating anyone for months, if not years!” Takato nods vigorously at this pronouncement. “Did you get artificially–”  
  
Aki flicks a steaming chunk of sweet potato at Kou, hitting him straight in the face. “Of course not. Don’t be an idiot, Kou.”  
  
Meanwhile, Takato racks his brain for an explanation, anything that could explain _this_ — they’ve often teased Aki of ending up a spinster, so rarely does she go out with anyone — and comes up with a fragment of a memory. “Is the father the guy who picked you up after our New Year’s party?”  
  
Setting down her bowl, Aki looks at them, a serious, closed expression on her face. They have never seen such a look before on her, and it sends a jolt of surprise and foreboding shooting up their spines. “Yes.”  
  
“Holy crap,” Kou mutters from beside him, and Takato is inclined to agree. If his memory serves him right, the man cut a rather intimidating figure, tall, dark, impeccably dressed and very much older than them, with a rather snazzy car they all admired. Drunk as Takato was then, he’d enough sober brain cells to hesitate handing over a very intoxicated Aki to him (the man was, after all, a complete stranger to them), but the man just smoothly took her from their arms and carefully loaded her into the car and then drove off before they could even raise a peep of protest.  
  
The next time they saw Aki after that, they’d all forgotten about the man, perhaps collectively dismissing him as some sort of alcohol-fueled illusion. Aki never mentioned him either, and so the matter was dropped from their respective memories.  
  
In hindsight, they should have all remembered him. They should have all asked her about him.  
  
“You’re dating him?” Takato asks. “Back then, I mean?”  
  
“Not…really.” Aki grimaces, lips twisting as if she’d eaten something bitter. “We’ve been sort of…casually seeing each other.”  
  
“Like sex friends?”  
  
“Shut up, Kou,” Aki and Takato say in unison. “I’m not–whatever gave you that idea?” Aki splutters, blushing like a rose.  
  
“So he’s what? Your boyfriend? Your lover?” Kou’s eyes go wide and a little wild. “Are you his mistress?”  
  
“Kou, if you do not shut up, I will pour the whole hotpot over you,” Takato threatens, noticing the stricken look on Aki’s face at Kou’s questions. He nudges him hard with his elbow in the stomach. “You’re upsetting her,” he hisses at him in a low voice.  
  
Kou looks abashed for a moment. “Sorry,” he mutters. “It’s just,” he struggles to explain, seemingly hard-pressed to find words, “you never mentioned him. At all. Ever. Even after the New Year’s party when he picked you up. So who is he?”  
  
“He’s the father of my child,” Aki calmly tells them, as if that explained everything. “Do you want to see the ultrasound pictures?”  
  
 **Wonder**  
  
Takaba likes their house more than she could ever admit out loud, but she’s sure Asami knows, if the smug looks he gives her whenever he caught her exploring is any indication. That she should come to live at the house that held so many memories of her younger years felt a bit strange, if not surreal. Who would have thought she would come back here to raise a child?  
  
The house, situated on top of a hill at the end of a winding cul-de-sac road, stood as a little aerie, commanding a good view of the sprawling city and of the bay (that is, if you managed to climb up to the roof), had been a sort of refuge during her turbulent teenage years, and she spent many days here, just wandering and climbing about, hanging out with friends, and taking pictures. She had particularly loved the brightly colored camellias that dotted the snow-covered, then overgrown garden during winter, the way the dappled sunlight had created dancing shadows and light within the empty house during lazy afternoons.  
  
But the one she is truly fascinated with was the old sakura tree in the yard outside the dining room that blossomed spectacularly in spring, pink blossoms drifting down like snow, soft and cool. She and her friends sometimes sneaked in at night during hanami season to hold small parties underneath it. They would spread their blankets on the overgrown grass, with only emergency lamps as their light, and eat and drink and be merry.  
  
“I make pretty good sakuramochi,” she said absently one time during an early dinner as she gazed at the sakura tree through the window, bare of blossoms, leaves in the warm golden color of autumn.  
  
“Do you?” he asked with a raised brow. He had become used to Takaba absentmindedly musing out loud disjointed thoughts. He probably chalked it up to pregnancy and hormones, the bastard.  
  
“My grandparents taught me how to make them when I stayed at their place. We have these weeping sakura trees near my grandparents’ home in Kamakura, and every now and then, we go there for hanami, so we’d make some sakuramochi to eat.” She paused, smiling at the memories, and then rambled on. “Sometimes we give them out as gifts to relatives and friends. The sakura tree in my mother’s family’s main house in Kyoto is bigger, though, but not as big as the one I saw as a child in some relative’s estate. That one is fucking huge and old. It had sacred rope tied around its trunk and–is there something wrong?” she asked, noticing the odd, almost fond look on Asami’s face.  
  
Asami only smirked as a reply, and went back to eating. Takaba resisted the urge to throw a plate at him. She kicked him under the table instead.  
  
(That night, she dreams of the sakura tree with the sacred rope, heavy with blossoms, and of a little boy with a halo of curly hair and bright amber eyes playing underneath it. She knows without a doubt, that the boy is her son, the child she carries within her womb.  
  
But when she wakes up in the morning, she has already forgotten.)  
  
 **Question**  
  
Despite her anxiety, the second visit to the doctor is going well so far. Asami even behaved himself, every inch the worried and attentive father-to-be, staying close by her side, even touching her hand when he gets his first look of their child in the ultrasound monitor.

Everything is going fine, and all is well, her doctor, Dr. Ootori tells her as she looks over the results of Takaba’s tests and examinations. Takaba lets out a sigh of relief at her pronouncement, feeling ridiculously happy. She’d been worrying something had gone wrong, what with all the misadventures she had back when she didn’t know she was pregnant.  
  
“Do you have any questions?” her doctor says.  
  
With a sheepish smile, Takaba confesses to her doctor she’s afraid she’s getting a little neurotic this early in her pregnancy, a produces a little list of questions to ask the doctor.  
  
To her surprise and relief, her doctor smiles at her, kind eyes twinkling. “It’s all right. Most mothers, and especially first-time ones, are naturally anxious about their pregnancy.” Her doctor, thankfully enough, is an open-minded woman, frank in speech and does not shy away from questions, nor does she discourage them (as some doctors are wont to do).  
  
“I would advice you not to worry so much. You’re both young and healthy, and with very very few risk factors. I don’t think there will be any problems with the pregnancy.” She leans back in her seat and glances at her notes before looking back at her. “I would say stress is probably the one you should watch out for. Your line of work is known to be rather high on stress factors.”  
  
“I’ve tried to convince her to take a maternity leave,” Asami says dryly. “But she refused.”  
  
Takaba resists the urge to glare at Asami. “Oh, I think stopping work this early in the pregnancy is not necessary. I’ve had mothers who’ve continued to work well into their ninth month, even those in the same profession as you are, and everything went well for them,” the doctor says, “but I would recommend taking a lighter workload than the one you regularly had before as you get further into your pregnancy. And remember, don’t push yourself too much, especially when you’re feeling tired, and take things easy as much as you can.”  
  
“Of course.” She smiles gratefully at the doctor. She has had acquaintances who quit working as soon as they discovered they were pregnant, but Takaba would have died screaming in boredom and inactivity if she was stuck at the house for the whole of her pregnancy. When their doctor turned away for a moment, she flashes Asami a cheeky little grin in triumph. They’ve been having little arguments on how much work she could take on, Asami not liking the pace of her work, with its occasional all-nighters and out-of city (and country) travel. Asami just gives her a look that told her she’d be ‘paying’ for this at home.  
  
They continue to talk to the doctor for a few minutes, discussing about her vitamins and meds and other tests, as well as what foods she should eat and avoid. Asami even asks a few questions as well, mostly concerns about her safety. Then somehow, Takaba doesn’t know how it happened (but she’s pretty sure it’s Asami’s fault), the talk turns to sex during pregnancy.  
  
The doctor’s demeanor is reassuring and calming when she begins to talk about the matter, her face showing no trace of discomfort or embarrassment or ridicule. “There’s nothing wrong with having sex during pregnancy, despite what some may say or believe. Of course, you should observe due caution — nothing too dangerous or too rough. Feel free to ask questions if you’re unsure about the safeness of the activity you have in mind.”  
  
Takaba’s pretty sure she’s not going to asking any question anytime soon, but she has a feeling Asami might.

“In some cultures,” her doctor continues, “sex during pregnancy is very much encouraged. There’s an African tribe who believe that the father’s semen is vital in the development of the child, as it nourishes the child in the womb.”

Sneaking a glance at Asami, Takaba notes with some alarm that he seems to be listening rather intently at their doctor as she explains.  
  
“There’s even some recent research that indicates that it would be somewhat beneficial for pregnant women to have sex with their partners as often as they could — unprotected sex, if it is safe for their situation. The exposure to the man’s seminal fluid helps the mother build up immunological tolerance to the father’s genes, and this helps reduce the chances of miscarriage and pre-eclampsia.” Her doctor smiles benignly at them. Takaba, on the other hand, feels a little lightheaded at the implications of what she just heard. “Some studies even took it further. It’s been shown that women who regularly perform fellatio and swallow their partner’s seed–”  
  
 _Oh dear God_ , Takaba thinks to herself, her face reddening in growing embarrassment despite her best efforts not to blush. “That’s…interesting,” Takaba manages to croak out when the doctor finishes her lecture. “I’ll…keep that in mind.”  
  
She does not need to look beside her to know Asami is smirking at her, having found the perfect little excuse to fuck her. Not that he ever needed an excuse.  _Gods have mercy. I want out, NOW._  
  
 **Bane**  
  
“You,” Takaba says to the four-month unborn child in her womb, “are going to get both of us killed.”  
  
Her child, snug in his womb and happily cushioned and buoyed and fed by amniotic fluid, does not answer, but no doubt enjoying her current fare.  
  
She takes another noisy slurp of noodles,  _God, why do they taste so heavenly?_  “I mean, of all things to crave, why does it have to be this? Why couldn’t it be out-of-season food? Or weird delicacies? At least I would get some amusement and satisfaction watching your father trying to get them. Serves him right for all the trouble he puts me through.” The image of a hastily awakened Asami, dressed in rumpled pajamas, buying umeboshi at the local store in Minabe, Wakayama, in the middle of the night made her snort in amusement for a moment, before sobering up again.  
  
“But this,” she gestures rather dramatically to the bowl in front of her, “is suicide.”  
  
“Eating very spicy wonton noodles is suicide?” Takaba’s mother asks, stepping into the kitchen, a stack of steamer baskets full of dim sum in one hand. She carefully sets them on the table, opening one basket and then carefully mixing the sauce on a saucer. Her father is nowhere in insight, keeping to his darkroom, after Takaba developed an irrational irritation to his face.  
  
“It might as well be,” Takaba sighs as she daintily picks up one dim sum with her chopsticks.  
  
The changes in her eating habits were mild at first: a rare intense craving for chocolate or a fruit, an increasing frequency of midnight snacks, or a sudden dislike for a dish she used to enjoy. The worst one before the Cantonese food had been a craving for apples with the specific instruction that Asami should picked them himself from the tree (don’t ask why. She can’t explain it herself.). Asami, to her surprise, complied, and presented her with crisp red autumn apples neatly stacked in a basket.  
  
Then, when she hit her eleventh week, while Takaba was doing a photo shoot at the Chinatown in Yokohama, she took one whiff of the delicious smells coming from the kitchens of Chinese restaurant they were using as a background, and it all went to hell.  
  
The cravings have been  _ferocious_. She wanted Cantonese food pretty much every day for a week now and had to get it no matter _what_. Unfortunately, in the context of her situation and past experiences, to say the situation is awkward is a gross understatement. Takaba is fairly sure Asami isn’t superstitious enough to put more meaning on her craving for Cantonese food than what it warrants, but Takaba’s too unsettled by the whole thing and didn’t dare eat within Asami’s sight, and so she often got her parents to buy her food for her, and she would eat it over at their house.

The only thing that curbed her sudden craving for Chinese food that it’s not something pregnant women should eat a lot of because of its often high MSG content. So she often had it in smaller portions than she’d like.

Tsukiko gives her daughter a bemused look. “Can I ask why you eating wonton noodles and dim sum is such a dangerous thing?”  
  
“Asami hates the Chinese,” is the explanation she gives her mother, because telling her “because until recently the paternity of my child was in question, and one of the possible father is Asami’s rival and the leader of a Hong Kong mafia who raped me several times and shot Asami twice before he kidnapped me” would probably freak her mother out.  
  
“And this hatred extends to Cantonese food?”  
  
“Yes.”

Her mother gives her an odd look, then sighs, used to her daughter’s strange whims. “I see.”

  
\-----  
  
The next day, when she wakes up, there’s a steamer basket of dim sum on the table, with a note attached, written in Asami’s elegant script: “Idiot.” And scrawled beneath it was the caution, “Don’t overdo it.”  
  
Takaba stares at it for a moment, and then laughs. She should have  _really_  have known better.  
  
 **Quirks**  
  
Starting with her second trimester, Takaba occasionally became absent-minded or forgetful — not remembering an appointment, or why she went to a certain store, or where she placed some things. It was harmless enough hallmark of her pregnancy, until one day, when she forgot she was cooking and went for a nap. Her minders (that is, the men Asami assigns to ‘watch’ over her), had to rush into the house and put out the fire with an extinguisher and turn off the stove when the alarms bleared loudly from the smoke from the burning food. She and Asami had to stay at his place in Shinjuku for a week until the smell cleared away.  
  
Since then, Takaba has taken to writing down reminders in post-its, placing pens and post-its in various strategic areas, and soon the house is littered with multicolored paper posted in various surfaces and nooks and crannies like strange festival banners. “Why don’t you use your Blackberry to help you remember?” Asami asks one morning, when he woke up to find two post-its on the bathroom mirror: ‘Put down the toilet seat’ and ‘Put on a robe when you get out of the shower’.  
  
“I already do. But those notes are for you,” she tells him calmly while she keys in a few things in her now ubiquitous Blackberry. “I can’t stand it when you forget to do those stuff. They make me sick. Literally.”  
  
“I see.” And Asami calmly goes back to eating breakfast, unperturbed. It’s another one of her strange pregnancy-induced quirks — finding offense in things she usually didn’t find offensive before, like when she developed a strong aversion for hotpot or Kazuki Suoh’s face, the latter of which got vomited on, ‘by accident’.  
  
Surprisingly enough (or perhaps not), Asami deals with all of these changes with equanimity, almost…indulgently. Privately, Takaba suspects part of the reason he puts up with all of these is because of the sex.  
  
Dear God, the _sex_.  
  
It’s like overnight, Takaba’s become a ‘wanton harlot’ (as her mother teasingly called her when she complained to her about it). Contrary to popular belief that pregnancy ruins a couple’s sex life, in Takaba’s case, everything suddenly became much more…enjoyable; she’s become so much more sensitive and responsive (and aggressive, but she’ll never cop out to that), and her reactions have been _very_ intense, leaving her shaking and clinging to Asami to keep herself from being too overwhelmed with sensation.  
  
Really, she’s beginning to suspect this pregnancy is really biased towards Asami.  
  
She’s tried to hide this from Asami, but of course, we’re talking about the man who knew she was pregnant before she even found out herself, so it didn’t take long for him to find out and use it ruthlessly to his advantage.  
  
Oh, how he loves exploring her changing body like some new-found land, mapping the changes with his tongue-teeth-lips-hands, committing them to memory so he could find it again and plunder it for his (and her) pleasure. She resists, of course, she always does, but it’s hard to rebel against her own (traitorous) body’s wants and needs, and it isn’t long before he has her completely conquered in his arms.  
  
(But really, it’s hard to resist when someone as gorgeous as Asami inexplicably still finds you very attractive even after you’ve gained tremendous weight and have a belly the size of...a loaf of bread.)  
  
“You should be pregnant all the time,” Asami muses as he nuzzles the crook of her neck after a second round of really, really mind-blowing sex, his fingers tracing patterns along the curve of her belly bump.  
  
Still breathing hard and weak-kneed and trembling from her earlier orgasm (from just his lips and tongue and fingers _gods above_ ), Takaba barely summons enough strength and ire to glance over her shoulders to glare at Asami, who only smirks back at her. “Don’t push it, asshole.”  
  
The fingers slide to the curve of her buttocks, then down to the inside of her sex-slicked thigh, the only warning she gets before Asami before sheathes himself within her to the hilt in one deep thrust.

Takaba whimpers helplessly. _Fucking hormones_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this is indulgent and silly. What of it? /shot
> 
>  _Walking_ : There’s a longer version of this, where Aki’s friends completely freak out when they realize who Asami is, and has to be sworn to secrecy. Asami also comes by to pick up Aki, and Aki’s friends tell him to take care of Aki, or else. It’s written, but I didn’t post it here. Let me know if you still want to read it.
> 
>  _Wonder_ : I have no idea why I fixated on the sakura tree. I just like Aki reminiscing her childhood to Asami. Or the symbolism of cherry blossoms. Dun dun duuuuun.
> 
>  _Question_ : There’s research on the [relationship and effect parental tolerance and pre-eclampsia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-eclampsia#Induction_of_paternal_tolerance). Of course, I may have ended up misinterpreting things (and with this information being lifted from Wikipedia), so don’t take this too seriously. The African tribe the doctor mentions is, according to the study I read, is the Maasai. This belief is one of the reasons they were reluctant to use condoms.
> 
>  _Bane_ : I am amused at the thought of Takaba craving Cantonese (Hong Kong) cuisine while pregnant. The awkwardness would be glorious, especially in light of some superstitions on what pregnant women eat. Minabe, Wakayama is a town in Japan known for its high-quality umeboshi and Japanese apricots. Umeboshi is a frequent ‘craving food’ for pregnant Japanese women. 
> 
> _Quirks_ : Asami is a lucky, lucky bastard.
> 
> I apologize for any inaccuracies in this fic. /orz


	10. Halcyon Days: Part II

 

**_Part II_ **

**Valiant**  
  
Guarding Takaba Aki is a fucking nightmare.  
  
For the longest time (by longest, he means _for as long as he lives_ ), Kazumi Suoh has been firmly convinced that his assignment as the one in charge of Takaba’s surveillance and security is some sort of sadistic test to prove his worth to his boss. Because otherwise, nothing else makes sense.  
  
Logistically, her surveillance is easy enough to arrange and plan for. Suoh has the men, and they have the training and the skills and the means. Takaba has patterns they could follow and work around with. But the brat had the knack of occasionally (far often than Suoh liked) completely deviating from those patterns and ruining those careful plans with some unpredictable, stupid move that sends them all scrambling in (scrambling, not panic) an effort to keep ahead and keep her out of trouble.  
  
It doesn’t help that Takaba knows her way around the city very well, knows not more than a few unconventional shortcuts and routes, and doesn’t hesitate to sprint or parkour her way out of sight once she figures someone is tailing her. He had men who have collapsed in exhaustion while trying to keep pace with her. GPS tracking is truly godsend.  
  
Why the hell their boss, who doesn’t tolerate this kind of behavior from his men, condones Takaba’s shenanigans, oftentimes even amused by (or outright encourages) it, he can never really quite get.  
  
“Takaba isn’t a subordinate,” Kirishima tells him one time over a few drinks, when Suoh is inebriated enough to swallow his pride and voice his concerns to his superior. Kirishima simply offers him more drinks, a wry smile, and a few words of wisdom. “She’s his lover. Different rules and expectations apply.”  
  
And how different those rules and expectations are.  
  
For a while, Suoh thought of Takaba as some sort of queer, passing amusement for his boss, something he would tire of in time. Not an unnatural assumption, given their boss’s proclivities and strange sense of humor. He’d seen lovers come and go, few of them lasting very long; Takaba surely wouldn’t be any different.  
  
Then, Baishe’s leader, Liu Fei Long, decides to kidnap Takaba as some sort of bargaining chip, and it became very clear how different Takaba is from everyone else (and how wrong Suoh’s assumptions were).  
  
So, when he is informed Takaba is pregnant with the boss’s child, and he would be in charge of her security (and of course, the unborn child’s as well), Suoh would have had a panic attack had it not been for his training.  
  
And that is when the true nightmare began.  
  
(Okay. Maybe he had a little, itty-bitty panic attack when on the very day he was informed he would be in charge of a pregnant Takaba, she chose that day to suddenly disappear from their radar. He still gets a little weak-kneed remembering the look on his boss’s face when he informed him he had no idea where Takaba was.)  
  
Though since her pregnancy Takaba had been more cooperative and accommodating to having a security detail (or ‘creeps’ as she like to call them), it did not make her any easier to guard. If anything, it made things more nerve-wracking, trying to guard both her and her and the boss’s unborn child.  
  
Thankfully, she quit her work as an investigative photographer, and switched to less dangerous subjects. That was one potential security nightmare down.  
  
But then, as her pregnancy progressed and her girth increased, so did her propensity to getting into accidents and unpleasant situations skyrocket.  
  
(No, Suoh will not talk about Takaba’s...cravings and pregnancy quirks. There are no words for his experience on that. He will not talk about the near-impossible trips he had to make, the strange items he had to find, the strange sights he has seen.)  
  
There was the kitchen fire when she forgot that she was cooking and took a nap without turning off the stove, the horses and models that suddenly went amok in a fashion photo shoot, the druggie that tried to rob her while she’s walking back home, and the drunken driver that nearly hit her while she was crossing the street. Thankfully, none of these ended in any real harm.  
  
And then, just when Suoh thought he was getting a break, there was the tumble down the stairs that left her concussed and bleeding profusely from a laceration of the scalp.  
  
This one nearly ended…unpleasantly for Suoh and his men, but the boss managed to calm down (most of it due to Kirishima’s quick intercession and later, he learned, Takaba’s pleading), and they were given a second chance.  
  
Suoh made damn well sure he never fucked up that badly again.  
  
Not just for the sake of his own life and professional pride, but the sight of Takaba, pregnant and lying down those stairs, inert and bleeding…he’d seen and done some terrible things in his job, but that is one sight he never wanted to see again.  
  
(Too bad fate has other plans.)  
  
\------  
  
To tell the truth, he finds Takaba Aki, in her own strange way, annoyingly endearing (or is it endearingly annoying?). Beneath the bratty attitude, there’s a sweet earnestness and genuine honesty and empathy about her that’s all too rare in this world nowadays (especially in the particular world he inhabits). And, to Suoh’s constant surprise, an irrepressible strength that never seems to die down no matter what misfortune fate throws in her way.  
  
(Perhaps, at last, he finally found out why his boss is so drawn to her, and would gladly watch the world burn to have her in his hold.)  
  
 **Blessing**  
  
In her fifth month, as dictated by Takaba family traditions, an _obi iwai_ is held for Takaba at her grandparents’ shrine, with her grandmother snugly wrapping the blessed obi around her stomach while saying prayers for a safe and healthy pregnancy and delivery. Despite the solemnity of the occasion, Takaba finds herself a little embarrassed at baring her now more visibly swollen belly, even if it was in the presence of family and Asami.  
  
“Those prayers should be extra-strength,” Asami teases her when it was over and the two of them were heading to join her grandparents for tea, “considering how prone you are to misadventures.”  
  
She rolls her eyes, and then snaps back, “Right. If anything, you’re the reason I should need extra protection, Mr. Big Bad Wolf.” She frowns when she notes the way Asami is staring at her. “Stop looking at me as if you want to eat me up,” she hisses. “I–”  
  
In a heartbeat, she finds herself pinned against the (thankfully sturdy) shoji doors, Asami’s breath hot against her neck. Before she could react, he bites her near the base of her neck, making her arch against him. Asami then soothes the bite with warm swipes of his tongue, just as his hand curve down and along the side of her body in that possessive way he’s been doing since she’d started showing. _Just what I need, an Asami having a pregnancy fetish._  
  
“Asami,” she says, a little breathless. She bites her lip to stifle a gasp when he nips at her throat. “Get off. I don’t want to traumatize my grandparents, for the love of God. We are still within the vicinity of the _shrine_.”  
  
“I don’t think your grandparents would mind.”  
  
She glares at him. “Stop pushing your luck. _They_ may like you, and _they_ may not mind, but _I_ do.”  
  
(Turns out, she didn’t mind that much. She just hopes the gods in the shrine didn’t mind too.)  
  
\------  
  
“You actually _like_ him,” Takaba says to her grandmother with astonishment as they watched, while sitting on the veranda eating rice cakes, her grandfather and Asami talk, later that afternoon, the two men in deep discussion over antique weaponry, as both of them, it turns out, were avid collectors. They make a pretty picture together, Asami in his modern, sleek bespoke business suit, her grandfather in his priestly garb of kimono and hakama, side by side, under the row of the shrine’s many vermillion _torii_ , modern and ancient Japan in one frame. Instinctively, her fingers twitch for want of a camera. “I didn’t think you’d like him.”  
  
Asami’s earlier introduction to her paternal grandparents via formal tea ceremony two month ago had been a success — so successful they had been invited back for more informal get-togethers with her grandparents.  
  
Not even Takaba’s parents welcomed Asami this well. Hell, from the way Takaba’s mother tells it, not even Takaba’s _parents_ themselves were welcomed this way by her grandparents. Takaba has a feeling that, somehow, her grandparents knew far more about Asami than they were willing to reveal. Overcome with curiosity, Takaba blurts out, “Why do you like him?” _What do you know that I don’t?_  
  
“He comes from a good family,” is her grandmother’s answer. She does not offer any further elaboration on how she knows Asami is from a ‘good’ family, and instead adds, “You are well-matched, in a strange sort of way. He is a person of strength and determination, as you are.”  
  
She looks straight into Takaba’s eyes, her blue eyes clear as cold wintry sky. In her robes of red and white, she is the mystic priestess of Takaba’s childhood, speaking in her usual calm, but cryptic manner. “You will need much of those traits, in the future.”  
  
A shiver runs up Takaba’s spine at her words. She wants to ask her what she means by that, but her grandmother continues, in the same calm, almost deadpan voice, “Also, he is a rather handsome man.” She leans over, and whispers in a low, conspiratorial tone. “Don’t tell your grandfather, but I’m rather weak with those types, especially those with such callipygian features.”  
  
Takaba snorts with laughter at this unexpected confession. “Well, I suppose he is good looking,” she says grudgingly, “but his personality is the worst.”  
  
“Ah, well. Nobody’s perfect.” Her grandmother then takes out a paper packet from her kimono. “I almost forgot. This is also for you.”  
  
Peeking inside the packet, Takaba discovers it is an _anzan omamori_ , an amulet to provide protection during pregnancy and childbirth.  
  
A smile lit up her grandmother’s face, making her look like one of the mischievous fox statues in the shrine. “I made it very special, just for you. Extra strong, as they say.”  
  
“I hate you all.”  
  
 **Nowhere**  
  
It’s Friday night, and, as usual, there’s a little informal gathering of police officers of the Metropolitan Police Department in a little out-of-way bar in Tokyo. The bar is packed and noisy with a smattering of characters, from the red-faced, hard-drinking salarymen to boisterous drunk college students. Besides the police officers’ table, a man with long wavy hair and a pointed goatee lies facedown on the table, snoring loudly enough just to be heard over the din.  
  
The policemen nursed their drinks in silence for a few minutes, as if waiting for something. Finally, a detective from the Japanese Organized Crime Division drawls, “He’s been doing a bit of ‘housekeeping’ these past few months.”  
  
“Very thorough housekeeping,” someone from the Public Safety Division ( _ah, Fujimiya Kei_ ) says with a snort. “Violent and petty crime rates are a record low, unruly gangs and criminals are brought in line…really, we should think of giving him a gift basket, he’s doing our jobs so much better than we do.”  
  
Raucous laughter erupted around the table. Minami Sora, a rookie detective recently transferred to the Drugs and Firearms Division of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police just two months ago, tries not to look too apprehensive when Senior Superintendent Narita, a bulldog of a man and the most senior of the gathered policemen, slides one shot of whiskey to him and kept the other one for himself.  
  
“Take it, boy.” Narita says with a wry smile. “You’ll need it. Some conversations are meant to be made while a little drunk. This is one of those conversations.”  
  
Minami bristles a little at the ‘boy’ remark, but takes the glass. One does not simply refuse drinks from one’s superior in rank, after all. “Thank you, sir.” He sips the drink carefully, choking a little at the taste, the burn of whiskey in his throat.  
  
He eyes his other colleagues he shares the table with. Most of them were from the Criminal Investigation Bureau, under various divisions, all of them a few years his senior. He’d been flattered to be invited to this gathering, though a little wary. This group had a bit of ‘reputation’ in the MPD, as some sort informal ‘elite’ group.  
  
Narita drinks his second (or is it third?) whiskey in one swallow. He smiles at Minami briefly, and then his expression turns serious. Still holding the shot glass, he raised one finger. “You’re probably wondering what conversation this is all about. First and most important rule in this line of work: Do not, and I mean this, do NOT cross or mess with Asami Ryuuichi. Which you probably did.”  
  
 _Oh_. It makes sense now. A week ago, after a month of seemingly hopeless investigation, Minami managed and helped execute a raid on a shipment of illegal firearms and drugs, one of the biggest this year. Unfortunately, despite the mountain of evidence he gathered, the investigation got shut down by orders from the top. To say he’d been furious would be an understatement. All that hard work for nothing!  
  
 _Asami Ryuuichi_. The name has been some sort of boogeyman in the MPD for as long as he could remember. Mention it to anyone and they would get the ‘deer in the headlights’ look and would try to change the subject as fast as they could.  
  
Minami ran across the man’s name a few times in the course of his investigations, and barely got anything that wasn’t public information (which isn’t a lot in the first place). His official file is a mere five pages long (his ‘unofficial file’ is about three filing cabinets’ worth). Even his own sources on the shipment didn’t mention him by name.  
  
Trying to tie Asami Ryuuichi to anything illegal proves time and again to be a fruitless endeavour, and should anyone try to bring charges against him, he has a battalion of lawyers at his disposal (not to mention judges, politicians, police officers…) to block them at every turn. To this day, the man has never been formally charged, arrested, or incriminated of the crimes attributed to him. “Is he the one behind that?” he asks.  
  
“Some people think he is.” Narita frowns, brows furrowed into deep grooves as he mulls things over. “But the whole thing was so sloppily done, I doubt it is him. It usually takes a bit more to stumble on any of his operations. Not to say you didn’t do a good job, but still. Traceable documentation, incompetent subordinates, inadequate bribes…he’s far more sophisticated than this.”  
  
“But then why did the case get shut down so fast?” Minami says, voice raising, unable to keep his frustration in check. “We conducted the raid just a week ago and then the whole thing’s shut down the next day. Nobody gets that treatment unless it’s him.”  
  
“Well, if it isn’t him, which is very likely, or if it is one of his men that fucked up, he’s probably planning to deal with this in his own terms. Probably he’s going to have a long talk with them.”  
  
“Getting soft, is he?”  
  
“Soft?” Narita scoffs, and then grins viciously, baring his teeth. “Tell that to Kadokawa-kai. Or Urashima Keitaro. If you can find their bodies, that is.”  
  
“I heard he had the bodies melted in a vat of acid,” another detective chimes in, sounding just a tad bit gleeful than what is appropriate.  
  
“That’s…gruesome,” Minami says with a shudder, taking another sip of his whiskey.  
  
“That’s the Mexican cartel, Shinohara,” Narita barks out, amused. “You’re mixing it up again. He uses other ways to persuade recalcitrant idiots to fall into his line of thinking. Much more _persuasive_ ways.”  
  
“I thought he’d be mellowed out by now,” someone from the Department of Intelligence ( _Takatori Shuuichi_ , Minami remembers) says as he takes a sip from his beer, “since he’d settled down.”  
  
Everyone pauses at that bit of news, and stares at Takatori, who blinks at them in confusion at the sudden scrutiny. “Oh, is this about that photographer? The one who got caught up with his feud with Baishe?” Shinohara asks.  
  
Takatori nods. “Takaba Aki, I think that was her name. Someone from the public prosecutors mentioned her a while back, in some connection with Yamazaki’s case. I think she was also the one who got those photos that was used as evidence to raid one of his clubs about…a year ago?”  
  
“Really? And now he’s screwing her?” Minami cringes a little at Shinohara’s crudeness. “That’s one hell of a reversal. Is that what you mean by ‘more persuasive ways’, sir?” he asks Narita with a leer.  
  
“I’d advise you not to speak too lightly of her,” Takatori warns. “Or do anything to her, if you meet her. Baishe and the Russian mob learned that the hard way, if the stories are to be believed. Interpol says that incident at the ship ended in a bloodbath and an eventual schism in Arbatov’s _Bratva_. There’s even this story one of our colleagues tried to use her to get some information, and he ended up badly beaten.”  
  
Shinohara whistled. “Must be some looker. Like…who’s that famous pretty woman that got abducted and that started a war? Helen of Troy?”  
  
Narita snorts at Shinohara’s fancifulness, while Takatori frowns. “Hardly. It’s probably because he doesn’t like his possessions being messed with than her beauty. And I don’t think the girl went willingly with Baishe, in any case. Or with Asami, if you think things through. Hard to say no to someone who probably doesn’t take no for an answer.”  
  
Their discussion eventual peters out to desultory talks for a few minutes before they went back to drinking. Minami quietly thinks over the things he just learned while taking little sips of his drink. When he eventually runs out, he briefly contemplates getting another one when a sudden flash of light catches Minami’s eye, and he turns.  
  
At the table near them, the sleeping drunk man is now awake, up on his feet and arguing loudly with a very pretty young woman in a khaki green dress and leather jacket holding a DLSR camera away out of his arm’s reach. “–little minx! Give me that!”  
  
The young woman grins with wicked mischief. “Sara-san’s gonna love you when she sees this photo, Mitarai-san. You look so handsome, sleeping over a pool of drool.”  
  
Growling, the man leaps at her, but she only steps aside and he falls on the floor, along with the table. “See you tomorrow!” she says, waving at the fallen man before leaving bar. Cursing, the man rises and lurches to follow her, but the bar’s two bouncers converge on him, and he is trapped.  
  
There’s a nudge on his shoulder, and with a bit of regret, he glances away from the amusing spectacle of the man getting kicked out. “Here.” Narita, the senior superintendent leans over and pushes another glass at him, and everything they’ve talked about comes earlier rushing back, his spirits suddenly lowering. The thought of never getting closure for his case (and probably his future cases as well) filled him with bitterness and anger toward the man who seems to be above it all.  
  
“Welcome to the club, kid.” Narita-san raised his (fifth? sixth?) glass of whiskey to him, giving him a biting smile. It is then that he realized what these little gatherings for.  
  
This time, Minami takes the glass without hesitation and downs it in one swift gulp.  
  
\------  
  
“So far, they’re still think you’re the one behind it. I’ve talked the kid, and there isn’t much I’ve gotten that you don’t already know. I did get the name of his contact, and some things you’d might like take a look at.”  
  
“Good,” Asami says coolly over the phone. He eyes the bloodied men on the other side of the one-way mirror, corpses of the members of those behind the illegal shipment that dared try to pin things on him. He ends the call with a sharp snap of his phone. Interrogating the men had turned up very little about who was the one behind it. He hopes this information would be of some use. “Thank you, Narita.”  
  
He turns to Kirshima. “Is she home yet?”  
  
Kirishima nods. “Yes. Suoh says Takaba-san went to bed just thirty minutes ago. Remarkably enough, nothing untoward has happened to her.”  
  
Asami smiles for a moment at the thought of Takaba's reaction if she ever hears Kirishima’s remarks. His expressions turned serious as the bodies are loaded out for a trip to the acid baths. Knowing Takaba’s luck, she just might stumble or get involved in this, and that is unacceptable. “Until this situation is resolved, I don’t want you to take your eyes off her.”  
  
"Yes, Asami-sama.”  
  
 **Jewel**  
  
Gifts are a touchy subject between Asami and Takaba. Asami learned the hard way that Takaba very rarely accepts his gifts, often viewing them with suspicion (and sometimes throwing them to his face). On Takaba’s part, what do you give a man who already has everything? If Asami wanted something, he could always buy it or take it for himself.  
  
So on Christmas Day, Takaba nearly jumps out of her skin when, while preparing breakfast, something cold and dainty touches her neck. “Don’t move,” Asami says from behind her, breath hot against the shell of her ear, making her shiver. “I was going to give you this after the birth, but I changed my mind.”  
  
“If this is a collar, I swear to God, I’ll beat you to death with this frying pan,” she says, but she obeys him, staying still. Asami only lets out a rich, warm chuckle that makes the hairs on the nape of her neck stand on its ends, and then there’s a faint click, and a heavy, cool weight settles around her neck just as something falls past the dip of her collarbones. “Merry Christmas,” he says, voice suddenly quiet.  
  
 _It’s a necklace_ , she notes when she looks down, lifting one hand to finger the chain. It has two pendants, one over the other, one a smooth disc with some writing in its center (which she later discovers isn’t writing at all, but Asami’s family crest), the other an exquisitely sculpted tree with a single pink jeweled blossom (that looks like it’s made out of pink and white diamonds, _holy fucking crap_ ). “It’s a sakura tree,” she says, recognizing the blossom, glancing up at him in surprise.  
  
“You seem to be enamored of them,” Asami says, an odd expression on his eyes that could only be described as tenderness. Takaba quickly averts her gaze, hiding the rising blush on her cheeks, resolutely looking at the pendant.  
  
But Asami isn’t finished with his surprises. “You can have the name of our child engraved here,” he says, and he touches the edge of the disc, his warm fingers ghosting against her skin. “If you’re inclined, you can add our names as well.”  
  
 _Like a family tree?_ Warmth floods her whole body at the realization, and for a moment, she is at a loss for words. “Oh,” she finally manages to say, overwhelmed. “Thank you. It’s…lovely.” Asami is getting better at eliciting reactions like this from her; she doesn’t know if she should be worried or touched. Maybe both.  
  
“I _hate_ you,” she says suddenly with heat, turning to glare at Asami. How the hell is she supposed to refuse this now? “I thought we weren’t doing gifts and now you have to give me this, and I only made a stupid scarf for you.”  
  
“Is that so?” Asami doesn’t as much as chuckles but purrs in her ear. He brushes the knuckles of his hand over the ridges of her spine, drawing out a sharp intake of breath from her. “I’m sure you could think of something to even things out. I’ll even help you out, if you want.”  
  
\------  
  
“That’s a nice scarf, Asami-sama,” Kirishima says the next day, noting the new knitted black-and-beige hound’s-tooth scarf neatly wrapped around Asami’s neck. “Is it handmade?”  
  
Kirishima instantly knows where (or, to be exact, from whom) the scarf came from when Asami touches the scarf with an odd smile on his face, the sort of smile his boss only makes for only one person on this earth. “Yes, it is.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Nowhere_ : I just like the thought of the actual head of the ‘unit’ pursuing Asami to be one of his informers. Aki ([this](http://pics.livejournal.com/twistedsheets10/pic/000a5y0z) is what Aki was wearing then, though the collar isn’t THAT big) and Mitarai is supposed to have a more extended appearance but I cut that. Do you want to see the rest of it?
> 
> _Bratva_ (Brotherhood) is the term used to describe the Russian mafia.
> 
> _Valiant_ : I like that thought of Takaba giving Kirishima and Suoh hell in guarding her. It’s in Suoh’s POV because…well, you’ll find out soon enough. Would you like a longer version of Aki’s accident?
> 
> _Blessing_ : Ha ha. On why Asami is from a ‘good’ family, that will be revealed...eventually.
> 
> _Jewel_ : The necklace is a mixture of these [pieces](http://pics.livejournal.com/twistedsheets10/pic/0009twtc) of [jewelry](http://pics.livejournal.com/twistedsheets10/pic/000a1wew). Of course, being Asami, this one is made out of platinum (a precious metal known for its rarity, durability, and how it doesn’t tarnish easily) rather than silver and pink diamonds (which are very rare). [This](http://pics.livejournal.com/twistedsheets10/pic/0009psyh) is the crest Aki sees. What do you mean this is not symbolic? /shot
> 
> Also, you can bet that [scarf](http://pics.livejournal.com/twistedsheets10/pic/0009xdtx) was used for, ehem, _other_ things.
> 
> Next chapter: Fei Long. And plotty things.


	11. Halcyon Days: Part III

 

**_Part III_ **

**Snapshots (a moment, a conversation)**  
  
 _Quarrel 1_  
  
“No, Asami! You do not get to make me an excuse to do shit like that. I am not–Sagaki’s a lecherous asshole, sure, but he’s hardly worth the time and effort to bother with, much less for you and your men to do that to him.”  
  
“Yet you understand why it had to be done.”  
  
“ _No!_ Okay, fine, I get your stupid logic behind it, but that still doesn’t make it any less okay! He’s in a hospital with his bones a jigsaw puzzle. How the hell–how many times did he ‘fall’ down those stairs?”  
  
 _Jousting_  
  
“Unlike my husband, I will not ask you to take care of her. There is little need for that.” Takaba’s mother chuckles, her voice rich and warm, full of affection and pride for her only child. “She’ll make sure you’ll take care of her — not deliberately, of course — it is simply her nature to make people care. She’ll probably fight you every step of the way, though. My daughter,” she adds quietly, “is not used to people taking care of her. She has always been self-sufficient. She had to be.”  
  
 _Because you were not there for her_ , Asami doesn’t say. He doesn’t need to. He only inclines his head in acknowledgement of her words.  
  
Takaba Tsukiko’s answering smile is razor-sharp in its bitterness. “I see you are as astute as you appear to be, Asami-san. I think I’m going to like you.”  
  
 _Share_ (a continuation of _Walking_ )  
  
Aki put her head in her hands, looking utterly miserable at their questions about the father of her child and her relationship with him. “I wish I could explain the situation better, but I really can’t. It’s all very complicated.”  
  
Takato nudges Kou hard in the stomach with his elbow, and then touches Takaba’s shoulder, an awkward attempt to comfort. “Hey, don’t strain yourself, all right? You don’t have to force yourself to explain.”  
  
Aki raises her head and smiles gratefully at him. Takato starts to smile back, but frowns as a thought comes to him. “Is he taking responsibility of you, at least? Because if he isn’t–”  
  
“I’ve been living with him for almost two months now.” She shifts uneasily in her seat, obviously uncomfortable at the admission, but doesn’t look away. “And yes, he’s taking responsibility for this, not that I need him to, but well. And he’s met my parents, in case you’re wondering.”  
  
 _Oh_. That put a different spin on things. Aki wouldn’t have introduced him to her parents if things weren’t serious. “Did they freak out?”  
  
“Oh, god, _yes_ ,” Aki says with a laugh. “You should have seen the look on their faces.”  
  
“Does this mean he’s marrying you, then?”  
  
“NO!” This time Takato didn’t resist slapping Kou on the head in rebuke. “I mean, we’ve never talked about it, and even if he asked, which he never would, I would never say yes.” She set her mouth in a thin, grim line. “As if I need to get myself further tied up to an asshole him,” she mutters, almost to herself.  
  
“Okay, enough about that asshole,” Kou declares, clapping his hands loudly. “How about you? How are you feeling? I hear pregnant women throw up all the time. Are you? How far along are you? Is it a boy or a girl? These two uncles would really like to know.”  
  
Laughing, Aki tries to answer all of Kou’s rapid-fire questions. Yes, she is fine, no, she doesn’t get nauseous often, except when she’s too stressed or nervous. She’s about ten weeks along, and no, they don’t know what the sex of the baby is yet, though Aki is pretty sure it’s a boy. “I think I had a dream about it,” Aki says, “something about little boy under a huge sakura tree. But I’m not sure.”  
  
She even lets them touch her still flat stomach, and she gives Takato a smart rap on the head when he makes a joke about her impending weight gain.   
  
_Quarrel 2_  
  
Takaba’s fingers dug into her temple, a futile effort to keep her headache and temper down. “Let’s go over this again, all right? Why the hell do I suddenly have multiple bank accounts in different tax havens worth a fuckton of dollars? Please tell me you’re not using me as part of your money laundering operations. Is this money even _legal_?”  
  
 _Victory_  
  
“Ah. It appears your guess is right.” The doctor smiles at Takaba, as on her waist, Asami’s hand tightens in a possessive sort of grip, a warm, familiar comfort, now. “It’s going to be a boy.”  
  
 _Bias_  
  
“We are not naming him after you,” Takaba says firmly to Asami, one sunny morning during breakfast, about a few days after they found out the sex of their unborn child.  
  
“And why not?” Asami drawls, looking unperturbed as always.  
  
“Because I think it’s the height of egocentrism that you would name our son after you. And it shows lack of creativity and imagination. And also I’d like to give him a head start on having a personal identity beyond being known as your son.”  
  
“Isn’t that a little too much thinking ahead?” His lips curl to an amused smirk. “Are you suggesting he’ll develop an inferiority complex because he has my name?”  
  
Takaba turns up a pert nose to him and quips back, “Isn’t that a little too much thinking ahead? And hell, no. He’s _my_ son, too. With _my_ genes he’ll probably kick your ass before he could even walk.”  
  
 _Whimsy_  
  
The meeting with the Loach was entering a lull in the middle phase when Kirishima hands Asami his phone.  
  
“Oh, hi,” Takaba’s voice is hushed, though he could sense a barely leashed excitement in it. “Uhm, are you busy right now? I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”  
  
Asami looks across the table at the Loach, who was busy conferring with his two nervous aides about the proposal. “No. What is it? Are you all right?”  
  
“No! I mean, everything’s fine. Yes. Uh. It’s, ah–well, uh–he’s kicking!” she finally blurts out. The rest of her words came out in a rush of excitement. “I mean, he’s been kicking before, but they’re mostly just weak flutters and this is the first time I could actually _feel_ the kicks from outside. And–” she falters suddenly, and she pauses, and then takes a breath. He could almost see her deflate. “I absolutely sound insane, don’t I?”  
  
Asami’s lips curl upward. “No, you don’t.”  
  
Takaba snorts, her good humor returning. “Yeah, well. Thanks. That’s all I wanted to say.” She pauses again, and then she asks tentatively, “Are you coming home anytime soon?”  
  
He flickers a glance at the Loach. “Perhaps. Why? Do you miss me? I’ve only been gone for a few hours.”  
  
“No! I don’t miss you!” Asami smothers a chuckle at Takaba’s protests. “I just…,” her voice trails off, and then, she mumbles, “I just want you to be here.” Then she raised her voice, as if trying to drown out what she’s said before. “But it’s fine! I’ll just…see you later! Bye!” The line goes dead.  
  
Needless to say, the meeting was over minutes later.  
  
 _Burning_  
  
When he comes home, Asami finds Takaba curled up and asleep on the couch, a habit of hers nowadays — as her body undergoes the inexorable changes that pregnancy demands, even her usual boundless energy is sapped and she tires easily, and has taken to napping around the house, very much like a cat — her hand over the gentle swell of her stomach. In sleep, Takaba has always seemed young and innocent — in her current condition, she looks even more so, and vulnerable as well, even fragile.  
  
Asami’s snorts quietly at his thoughts, even as he lifts Takaba into his arms and carries her to their bed, careful not to wake her. Young and innocent she may be, Takaba is far from fragile or vulnerable — beneath it all is a fierce will and determination, an incredible lust for life and happiness that she pursues with unflinching vigor.  
  
 _Breathing_  
  
They stay that way for a few quiet, still, moments, with Takaba pressed against him, her breaths coming deep and slow as she calms herself down from their intense sex, while his hand strokes her back soothingly.  
  
Then, there’s a sudden flutter of movement against his stomach, and Takaba lets out a startled huff against his neck. “Oh, great, he woke up.” Pulling away, she places a hand on the swell of her belly, and then grimaces wryly. “He’s been kicking pretty hard lately. As exciting as this development is, I hope he doesn’t make this too much of a habit. I still have need for my ribs and kidneys.”  
  
Asami chuckles at Takaba’s words, but the hand he puts on her stomach is both protective and concerned and a little curious — he has yet to feel his son’s movements within his mother. The child doesn’t stir at his touch, leaving him a little disappointed at his unsatisfied curiosity. “Are you all right?” he asks, his hand rubbing against the smooth, tautly stretched skin.  
  
His answer comes in the form of a sharp jab against his palm from inside Takaba’s swollen belly, and Takaba’s bright, helpless laughter at what must be bemusement on his face at the unexpected movement.  
  
(In that moment, Asami feels oddly breathless, caught in the sudden surge of intense emotions — protectiveness and affection and _want_ — for his unborn son and his mother. It is a strange feeling, but not entirely unwanted.)  
  
 _Smirk_  
  
“Well, he definitely takes after you,” Takaba says to Asami as they look at the three-dimensional image of their unborn child on the monitor. At Asami’s raised eyebrow, she grins impishly and points at their child’s mouth, “Look, he has your smirk.”  
  
 **Defeat**  
  
If he weren’t so thoroughly annoyed, Asami would have been impressed.  
  
After months of searching, the man who goes by the name Gu Jin Can has been found trying to leave Japan through a boat heading for Vladivostok, Russia, in a port in Hokkaido. In the past few months, Gu Jin Can has been quietly hunting down and killing all of those involved in the botched smuggling operation that had been blamed on Asami.  
  
The man was careful to not have witnesses, or if there were, he eliminated them. One managed to escape unnoticed, one of the murdered men’s girlfriend, a little Chinese waitress, and it is through her that they had a description of him. They also learned from her that despite his name, the man was possibly not Chinese. “He could be mixed blood or something. And he has this weird accent when he speaks Cantonese,” the waitress says. “And he spoke in another language–not Japanese. Something else.”  
  
Asami’s men had been able to apprehend him before he got out of Japanese waters. He put out a ferocious fight, taking out some of his fellow passengers on the boat, as well as two of Asami’s men in his bid to escape.  
  
“Asami-sama, he’s a fucking tough son-of-a-bitch,” Kirishima swore when the first two days of interrogation did not go well. An ominous start — Kirishima swearing is an extremely rare event.  
  
And true enough, Gu Jin Can has been strenuously resisting all efforts to exact a confession or information for more than a week now. Intimidated, deprived of food, water, sleep, clothes, and peace and quiet, beaten within the inch of his life, drugged, dunked, and electrocuted, subjected to excruciating pain and extreme temperatures, the man has yet to breathe out a single word of usable information.  
  
Confounding the matter was the fact that they had been unable to turn up any reliable information about him, leading some of Asami’s men to suspect, given the man’s resistance to torture and his skill in combat and killing, that he could have been part of some elite military unit, perhaps _Spetsnaz_ , the Russian special forces, which would make sense if one also factors in that he was heading to Russia.  
  
Kirishima put in the theory that Mikhail Arbatov could be the one behind the whole thing, but, though he considered it, Asami had other thoughts. That Gu Jin Can could be Russian or Spetsnaz means little — enterprising former members hired themselves out regardless of race, so long as there was money. Besides, Arbatov was far too preoccupied in a bitter and bloody split within his _Bratva_ with Yuri to meddle in his affairs. There is also Liu Fei Long and his history with Asami to consider.  
  
“Enough of this,” Asami says to Kirishima, after yet another unsuccessful interrogation. He takes deep drag from his cigarette, his first one since discovering Takaba’s pregnancy. “Get rid of him.”  
  
They bury the man alive in the foundation of one of Asami’s high-rise condo. As they watch him disappear into the thick pool of concrete, Asami is handed his phone. “It’s Liu Fei Long, Asami-sama,” Kirishima says gravely. “He’s here.”  
  
\------  
  
“Will you be all right by yourself?”  
  
Takaba smiles at her Dad, who looks back at her anxiously. “Of course. I’ll be staying here, eating.” She makes a shooing motion with her hands. “Go. I’ll be fine. I’ve been here thousands of times. This is my turf. Besides,” she tilts her head to the side, eyeing passing crowd of locals and tourists outside the Chinese restaurant, “I’m pretty sure someone’s keeping an eye on me.”  
  
“All right,” her Dad says, though the frown on his face shows how little he likes leaving her alone. Even a month later, her accident by the stairs still haunts them, it seems. “I’ll go over Wang’s store and get the stuff your mother wants. Stay here and don’t wander about.”  
  
“I’m not a child,” she huffs in annoyance, pouting. “I know this place like the back of my hand. I’ll be fine.”  
  
Her Dad suddenly reaches out and tweaks her nose. Laughing at her outraged yelp, he then places a firm kiss on her forehead, and murmurs, “I’ll be back soon. And if you behave, I’ll give you a back and foot massage when we get home.”  
  
“What an incentive,” she mutters as her Dad finally starts to leave.  
  
“You love them,” he tosses over his shoulder before he exits the store, bells chiming as the door swings open then shut. Takaba watches her father walk away and eventually disappear into the crowds, before turning back to her pregnancy book as she waits for her order to arrive.  
  
The Chinese restaurant is quiet, with her being the only customer, which is just fine by her. She enjoys the quiet times she has as much as she can, savors them even, as in six or so weeks, she would have very little personal time and quiet, what with birth of their son.  
  
 _Their_ son. Hers and Asami’s son. Takaba’s heart does a funny little happy twist at the thought of seeing their son face-to-face, after months of waiting. Though daily she worries about the challenges of the future, her worries do little to stem the growing excitement building inside her. Even Asami is caught up in the almost feverish anticipation for the birth of their child.  
  
“I hope he takes after you,” Asami had said rather dryly, but with rare affection, putting his hands over hers on her swollen belly, feeling their child move within her. That had been a rather…bemusing admission, but the memory of it makes her smile.  
  
Her soup finally arrives, and, after bookmarking the section about premature labor, she sets the book aside and readies herself to eat. As she reaches for her chopsticks, a shadow falls over her, blocking her light.  
  
“May I take this seat?”  
  
Chills shoot up her spine at the familiar voice, her heartbeat speeding up, and for a moment, she is back to that horrible day, once again sitting in that booth at the coffee shop. Inside her swollen belly, her unborn son erupts in a flurry of squirming and kicking, as if sensing her distress. Unconsciously, she puts one hand over her stomach to soothe him, which thankfully seems to work. Taking a deep breath to steel and calm herself, she slowly lifts her eyes and looks at the owner of the voice.  
  
Liu Fei Long stands across her, dressed in his usual fine Chinese clothes, his hair twisted into a simple braid. “Hello, Aki.” Then, as he did on that day, he seats himself in front of her, not waiting for her reply or assent. “It has been a while.”  
  
She doesn’t speak, her voice caught in her throat. Her heart continues to beat like it’s ready to burst through her chest as questions assault her mind. Does Fei Long know she’s pregnant? At their current respective angles and positions, the table prevented Fei Long from seeing her from chest down, and the loose bunching of her sweater obscured the state and size of her waist. _How long has he been keeping an eye on me?_  
  
From the corner of her eye, she sees the restaurant’s window’s curtains suddenly fall down, just as the thick crowd beyond it blocks the view of the outside and vice versa. Fuck. It takes much will power to stop herself from bolting away then and there. She doubts she could run fast enough away, in any case, considering her condition. She can only hope Asami’s men are indeed out there and doing something at this very moment, and that her Dad is safe, and no harm would come to her and the child.  
  
“I didn’t realize,” Takaba says finally, turning her attention back to Fei Long, willing her voice to calm despite the cold tide of fear threatening to overwhelm her, “that we’ll be doing a sequel.”  
  
She feels a little thrill of gratification at the look of confusion on Fei Long’s face. “Sequel?”  
  
“You know, a sequel to ‘Vengeance: Takaba Is Kidnapped as Leverage Against Asami’? I’m sure you remember the movie, seeing as you had a starring role there as the villain. If you plan on doing a sequel, count me out. I’m not interested. You can’t afford my talent fee, and I’m fully booked at this moment.”  
  
She leans forward, placing her palms flat on the table. “You told me, when we were alone in the ship, before the exchange, that you would no longer do me any harm.” She looks deep into Fei Long’s eyes. “Is that still case? Or have things changed?”  
  
A strange expression flickers in his eyes, and to her astonishment, he reaches out to touch her hand, as if to comfort and reassure. “I gave you my word. Nothing has changed. No harm shall come to you.”  
  
She forces herself not to show just how relieved she is, and not to flinch from his touch. Bastard that he is, Fei Long does seems that he will keep his word, once he has given it. Still, she doesn’t put her guard down. She leans back, moving her hands out of Fei Long’s reach. “That’s great. I’d really not like a repeat of last time. I’d rather not put myself between your and Asami’s gun again, thanks.”  
  
“Are you worried about me, Aki?” says Fei Long, lips curving upward into an amused smiled. God, how Takaba wanted to punch him for looking so…smug.  
  
“Don’t use my first name,” she snaps instead, peeved at his familiarity. “No, I’m not worried about you. I’m more worried about Tao. Who would probably sad if you died. Which you are probably in danger of right now because you seem to be an idiot.” She glares at him. “What are you doing here, Fei Long? You do realize what Asami would do to you if he found out you’re here.”  
  
Fei Long’s beautiful face stills for a moment, before he replies, “I have…some unfinished business that may or may not involve Asami. He seems to be intent on causing trouble for me. But do not worry, Aki. I don’t intend to involve you, or linger long.”  
  
“How reassuring. But I would prefer you leave right the fuck now.”  
  
That infuriating smile again. “Such temper. I am glad to see nothing has changed. You are still very much the same, despite the changes in your life. Tell me, what is it like, living with Asami?”  
  
 _Oh fuck_. Figures Fei Long had gotten wind of that somehow. Taking a page from Fei Long’s book, Takaba does not answer his question and just smiles back. “Speaking of Tao, how is he?” she asks. The boy was still in the hospital when she left. She’d thought about writing an e-mail or something inquiring about how he is, but she didn’t know where to send it to. “I hope he recovered well.”  
  
Fei Long narrows his eyes, and for a moment Takaba thinks he wouldn’t answer, but then his expression softens, as it always did when Tao was involved. Fei Long had such a soft spot for the kid. “Tao is doing well. He has grown so much, in the past few months.”  
  
“Not a little shrimp anymore, is he?” She liked Tao, who is rather sweet, though his devotion to Fei Long and Baishe is a bit disturbing for a kid. “He’s probably going to end up taller than both of us, the cheeky brat.”  
  
Fei Long smiles at that, and it lights up his face and makes Takaba’s heart twist with…something. Sometimes, she just forgets how beautiful Fei Long is. “He is strangely embarrassed about it — even asking the maids to lengthen some of his clothes in secret.”  
  
Despite the situation, she finds herself grinning at that anecdote. “Oh, that’s adorable.”  
  
There’s almost a comfortable silence between them, after that. But it only lasts for a moment. “You should leave, Fei Long,” Takaba urges, her stomach twisting into knots in sudden foreboding. “Asami will not be happy you’re here.”  
  
“As I’ve said, I would not be here had Asami chose to leave me and my business well alone,” Fei Long says sharply. “But that does not concern you, Aki. I–”  
  
“Is there a problem?”  
  
Takaba nearly jumps out of her seat when a warm, familiar hand descends on her shoulder. Looking up, she finds her father standing beside her, an unreadable expression on his face. He speaks again, this time, directed to Fei Long, and, to Takaba and Fei Long’s surprise, in what seems to be fluent Chinese.  
  
“There’s no problem,” Takaba says lightly, managing to smile despite her fears. “We’re just talking. Did you get everything?”  
  
“Yes. I’m sorry I took a while to get back. Some men,” he pauses, then narrows his eyes at Fei Long, who thankfully keeps silent, “were blocking the way. We can go now.”  
  
Fei Long rises gracefully from his seat. “It’s been good to see you again, Aki.”  
  
Takaba says nothing, and stands up, albeit with less grace. It’s only when she hears Fei Long’s sharply indrawn breath that she realizes she has forgotten something very important.  
  
“Should I offer you two congratulations?” Fei Long’s voice is strained and brittle as he speaks, his eyes sharp and bright with _something_ as he takes in Takaba’s pregnant form. Takaba’s heart lurches in her chest, suddenly horribly afraid and–  
  
“I think,” her Dad interrupts icily in Japanese, interposing himself protectively between her and Fei Long, one arm wrapped tight around her, “this conversation is over.” _Don’t come any nearer, or I will harm you_ , her father’s body language all but shouts.  
  
The hairs at the nape of her neck stand up. Pressed against her Dad, she could feel his muscles tensing up, reading for a fight.  
  
 _Fuck this_.  
  
Calmly, Takaba steps out of her father’s protective shielding and faces Fei Long. “I accept all sincere congratulations,” she says, with a faint smile, chin raised. “It’s been exciting, seeing you again, but we need to go now.” She takes her Dad’s hand in hers, squeezing it hard in silent reassurance. “Try not to get in trouble, and please give my warmest regards to Tao. Good bye.”  
  
She could feel Fei Long’s eyes boring into her as she and her father make her way out of the restaurant. The moment they step out, Suoh appears, along with several men, and hustles them out of Chinatown and into the car as fast as possible.  
  
“Is there going to be trouble?” she demands of Suoh as soon as they’re in the car. “Is Asami all right?”  
  
“We’re not anticipating any trouble, but we’re taking precautions, and yes, Asami-sama is all right. He’s been informed and on his way.” Suoh takes the driver’s seat, while another one of Asami’s men rides shotgun. “Please fasten your seatbelts.” As soon as she and her father were secure in their seats, they pull out and drive off.  
  
Several minutes later, her phone rings. She fumbles to answer it. “Asami?”  
  
“Are you all right?”  
  
She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Yes. We’re fine. Fei Long–he didn’t do anything. We just…talked. What’s going–”  
  
\------  
  
“–We just…talked. What’s going–”  
  
On the other side of the line, there is a thunderous noise that nearly deafens Asami.  
  
And then static, followed by silence.  
  
 **End of _Halcyon Days_**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Halcyon Days_ is supposed to be what it says on the tin:
> 
> _In the myth of Alcyone, Halcyon Days are the seven days in winter when storms never occur. In popular use, it can also mean to harken back to an earlier time, remembered as idyllic, whether accurately or not. The meaning in popular culture also refers to calm, peaceful days._
> 
> Hence, the nearly seven months of Takaba's pregnancy that passed in relative calm. But they did have quarrels during that time, both petty and serious.
> 
> Sagaki is the lecherous guy in Pray in the Abyss (you know, the pimpy dude) that molested Takaba. I don’t think Asami is in the habit of killing anyone who messes with usual!Takaba, but a pregnant Takaba is a different matter, I think.
> 
> The Loach is derived from the current Japanese prime minister, who likened himself to the dojo loach in a speech.
> 
> Gu Jin Can’s name is derived from this [term](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu_%28poison%29). Yeah. Subtle as a sledgehammer.


	12. Interlude: Quiet (a continuation of Nowhere)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some have said they wanted continuations of snippets in _Halcyon Days_ , so here is one of them. This one is for _Nowhere_ , where previously some cops had a bit of discussion about Asami and his activities.

 

Three days after he got thrown out (and banned!) from the club, Mitarai manages to catch up with Takaba as she was heading out, and ends up inviting himself to have a late lunch with her.  
   
“I’m not giving you those pictures, Mitarai-san,” Takaba tells him, looking displeased that he’s following her. “I’m certainly not giving them to you if you pester me during lunch, even if you’re paying for it.”  
   
“Who says I’m paying? Anyway, aren’t we colleagues? We used to go out for lunch occasionally before you got all hoity-toity. Besides, didn’t I help you get some exclusive scoops in the past? So _you’re_ the one who should be treating me.”  
   
“Right, because the twenty percent cut you demand for your ‘help’ isn’t enough,” Takaba snaps back.  
   
They still bicker as they head for that little French restaurant with those soft little round colorful pastries Takaba has taken a liking to lately, their arguments mostly about their work and photography techniques. When they pause to wait for the traffic light to change, Mitarai takes the chance to finally ask her the question that had been plaguing his mind since three days ago in that bar.  
   
“So are you?”  
   
“Am I what?” Takaba asks back absently, not looking at him.  
   
“Banging Asami Ryuuichi,” Mitarai says, as casually as he could. His voice is deliberately low, though the nearest person to them is across the street. “I overheard the cops talking about that before you came at the bar.”  
   
Takaba turns to him so fast she probably suffered whiplash. “They were _what_?” The look of horror on Takaba’s place is priceless. So is her flailing. “What the hell, I’m–Why is that even–”  
   
“So are you?” He chuckles when Takaba glares at him, blue eyes afire. He nudges her shoulder, leaning in and whispering conspiratorially, “Come on, you can tell me. I can keep secrets.”  
   
She rolls her eyes and tries to swat him, but he dodges the blow nimbly, grinning all the while. “Yeah, right,” she mutters. She falls silent after that, and stuffs her hands into her jacket’s pockets, as if suddenly cold, her brows furrowed, lips pressed to a thin line.  
   
The light changes, and they cross the street, Takaba keeping her mouth shut. Mitarai isn’t easily deterred, and with his journalist instincts, could tell there is _something_ to what the cops were talking about, however fantastic it seemed at first. “So you _are_ banging him.”  
   
“No! I’m not ‘banging’ Asami Ryuuichi!” She huffs in annoyance, muttering “stupid cops,” and looks away, a scowl on her lips. Mitarai thinks she’s going to give him the silent treatment again, and tries to quickly come up with a way to head that off when she suddenly speaks, her voice is curt and clipped. “Several months ago, I took some photos he didn’t like; got his place raided and all. He had my apartment trashed for it. It was supposed to be a multi-part story, but the rest of it got killed, the story deleted online, and then the investigation got closed down. Orders from the _very_ top, from what I’ve heard. I’ve been on his shit list ever since.”  
   
“I’ve only met him just the once,” she continues, grimacing as if she’d bitten a particularly sour lemon. “It’s was the most fucking unpleasant experience of my life. After that he just sent his men after me if I tried anything against him. Apparently I’m not worth his personal attention. I doubt he’d be ‘banging’ me with that kind of attitude, and I’m certainly not crazy enough to let him fuck me. I don’t know where rumors like that come from — probably from him, the bastard.”  
   
The resentment in her voice is real, and so is her anger, but Mitarai still has the nagging feeling she isn’t exactly telling the truth. _They do say the best lies are those that have some truth in it_. “Eh. Some guys like a bit more of a fight in their woman and not your usual tuna. Don’t sell yourself short, Takaba. You’re a pretty enough piece,” Mitarai says with purposeful cheekiness. “Fawn-colored hair, those puppy-dog blue eyes, nice lithe body, great ass and tits…you’re irresistible, really.”  
   
“You sound like fucking old pervert. I should punch you in the face,” Takaba threatens, though there’s not much rancor in her voice, “but I’d probably just injure my hands, and I need them tomorrow for a shoot. Besides,” she adds, flashing him a vicious grin. “I already have the means to ruin you.”  
   
Mitarai groans in despair, remembering the photos. He clutches her sleeve, tugging hard. “Come on, delete the damn things. I’ll never have a chance with Sara-chan if she sees that. I’m begging you.”  
   
Takaba shakes him off. “I don’t think you’ve _any_ chance with my editor with or _without_ the photos,” she says. “You don’t look like her type, even with your ‘roguish charm’.” She makes air quotes at ‘roguish charm’ with her fingers. Then her expression softens, just for a moment. “But I’ll think about it.”  
   
They go quiet after that, with Mitarai watching Takaba, wondering how much truth there was in what the officers talked about, in what she told him. Mitarai hasn’t seen Asami, but he’s heard and read _plenty_ about him recently, this mysterious businessman that is widely speculated to be the most powerful man in Japan.  
   
Why would a man like him have such a sustained…interest for a bratty photographer is beyond him. Oh, Takaba’s attractive, certainly; Mitarai didn’t miss the way heads swiveled to her when Takaba entered the bar, the way she unconsciously compelled attention. But men like Asami must have had women throwing themselves at him probably all their lives, women far more beautiful than Takaba. So what about Takaba managed to catch (and hold) Asami’s interest?  
   
They once again stop at another intersection, and waits for the pedestrian light to go green. As he idly watches the cars pass by, Mitarai wonders if maybe he should take a closer look at this Asami, see what he could dig up and learn. He’s done a few preliminary background checks, and the results have been…intriguing. If he could get something on that man, prove the allegations…  
   
“Don’t even think about it,” Takaba says in a flat voice, jarring him from his thoughts. He gives her an innocent look. She doesn’t buy it. “Chasing after Asami, I mean.”  
   
“Why?” he asks with a cocky smirk.  
   
“Because he’s _mine_ ,” she says, voice calm and fierce all at the same time, and it makes at the hairs at back of his neck stand up, and it wipes the smug look off his face. “He’s _my_ quarry. No one is going to get him other than _me_. Do you understand?”  
   
Mitarai nearly breaks his neck, so fast his nods in assent were.  
   
“Good.” Takaba’s expression changes back to her usual shit-eating grin. “So, what else did you hear from those cops? Anything interesting?”  
   
After that little display, Mitarai is only too glad to part with the information.  
   
\------  
   
“Is there something going on that I should know about?” Takaba asks Asami when he comes home from…whatever he’s been doing today. She’s curled up in the sofa, huddled under blankets, impatiently waiting for him for hours. “And by ‘I should know about’, I mean ‘why do I have three more people following me now?’.”  
   
She didn’t bother bringing up the bit about the police officers talking about her. While the thought of the police (and Mitarai, of all people!) speculating about her relationship with Asami is just…disturbing (and annoying), that isn’t quite her main concern. Having additional men on her tracking her movements usually meant something was going on. Something dangerous.  
   
Asami runs his fingers through her hair, ruffling it in that irritating way of his that made Takaba feel like she was such a child. “I see you’ve been doing some prying.”  
   
She doesn’t let the hint of displeasure in his voice deter her. “I wasn’t _prying_.” Which is true. Mitarai _volunteered_  the information with hardly very little prompting, and she just…made a few calls, is all. Hardly _prying_. “I just happen to have friends, _who tell me things_.”  
   
 _Unlike the man who I happen to be living with and whose child I’m carrying, who tells me nothing_ , she doesn’t add. She’d get into an argument with him on that, but she’s tired and sleepy and sick with worry, so she just says, “I just want to know if I should be more careful, or if I have to be on the lookout for something.”  
   
“Caution, Takaba? How unusual from you.”  
   
“Oh, be like that!” she snaps, her temper flaring suddenly. She kicks off her blankets, all set to storm back to the bedroom and lock him out had not Asami wrapped her with one of the blankets and pulled her down beside him on the sofa. She tries to fight her way out of his arms, but Asami’s arms were like iron bands around her.  
   
In retaliation, she tries to stomp on his feet. When that fails, she tries to headbutt him. That fails too.  
   
“Still a little hellion,” Asami says with a chuckle, gathering her close, unfazed by her rather violent display of temper. “The additional men are just a precaution,” he says, all amusement gone from his voice. “I assume you already know many of the details. I don’t want to leave you and our child unprotected if things escalate, though I doubt that will happen. Still, I want you to be more careful, for the child’ sake, if not for yours.”  
   
“I get it! You don’t need to say that! I _am_ being careful.” Takaba isn’t _stupid_. She’d seen and experienced first hand what Asami’s enemies would do to gain the upper hand from him, and they could get _vicious_. And she knows how important it is for her to remain safe, not just for her child’s sake, but for Asami’s and herself.  
   
She closes her eyes, and wills away very hard the memory of Asami bleeding from the shots he’d taking trying to protect her. She takes a calming breath, and when she’s composed enough, turns her head to him. “What about you? Are you…okay?” A silly question, really, but after what she’d heard from Mitarai, she can’t help but worry. Someone setting up things to get Asami to take the blame can’t be good.  
   
Asami kisses the back of her head, his hand warm against her belly, and teases, “Don’t worry about me. As long as you’re both safe and you don’t get into trouble, everything will be fine.”  
   
“Don’t say things like that, you bastard.” Though she relaxes in his arms, she can’t help the feeling of foreboding in the pit of her stomach, heavy with dread.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like Takaba being possessive, is all. And yeah, Asami and Takaba had a…little talk about this later.


	13. Chapter 9

 

It’s just Minami Sora’s luck, that while sightseeing in Yokohama on his day off, the world explodes into chaos.  
  
He’d been in the act of selecting drinks in a konbini, debating whether to get a Coke or Pocari, when there’s a sudden shrill squeal of tires, followed by a sickening thunderous crash. He was outside the store in seconds.  
  
Two heavily tinted vehicles, a black BMW and an SUV, had slammed into each other, bits and chunks of metal from parts and glass scattered around them.  
  
“Shit.” Even from his position across the street, it looks bad. He sprints to the crash site to take a closer look, while quickly dialing for emergency services with his cell. He frowns when all he gets is static, his call not going through.  
  
A familiar piercing wail catches his attention, and to his relief, an ambulance arrives. _Where the fuck are the local cops?_ he thinks absently. As paramedics in their white helmets, about five of them, spill out with their rescue equipment, swarming over and cordoning off the accident area, Minami takes a moment to take in the situation.  
  
The driver’s side of the BMW was smashed into itself, as if punched by the angry fist of God. Fuck, at least the glass isn’t shattered completely, but webbed with cracks as if it was suddenly populated by a thousand spiders.  
  
Witnesses would tell him later how the SUV came hurtling seemingly out of nowhere at the BMW. The other car tried to swerve to avoid it, but it was too late, and the SUV rammed the driver’ side and stopped the other car dead in its tracks.  
  
“Need help?” he asks the paramedic who seems to be in charge, flashing his badge as he spoke. To his side, he noted that the other paramedics have begun to use the hydraulic spreader on the BMW, positioning them on the fender and the gaps on the door, where the hinges would be. He winces at the sharp shriek of metal being forced open.  
  
The man narrows his eyes and stares strangely at him for a moment, as if he didn’t know what to make of his presence, but then shook his head. “Thank you for your offer, but you’ll just get in the way, sir, and we need to move them fast. But perhaps you could help us clear the area from bystanders and the oncoming traffic so they won’t block us?”  
  
“Sure. Where–” Just as they are speaking, the other paramedics comes with one of the BMW’s passengers, and oh _shit_ , it’s an unconscious young woman, a cervical collar around her neck and an oxygen mask over her face, strapped securely to the gurney. Her clothes splattered in blood, probably from the bleeding cut on her head. Minami lets out a sharp hiss even as his stomach lurches in dread when he notices the tell-tale bump on her abdomen. _Dammit. Pregnant_ _woman_.  
  
“Out of the way!” the paramedic rolling her to the ambulance shouted. She’s quickly loaded into the waiting ambulance, and then, to Minami’s surprise, the rest of the paramedics go in as well. “Wait!” he shouts, impulsively grabbing hold of the ambulance door as it was about to shut. “What about the others? Aren’t you going to leave someone behind for them?”  
  
The man in charge glares at him in annoyance. “Sir–”  
  
A familiar piercing wail catches both their attention. Another ambulance, no doubt on its way here. The paramedic smiles (almost condescendingly) at Minami. “The other crew will take care of the others, sir. Please assist them. We must be going. The young lady and her unborn child are in desperate need of immediate help.” Without waiting for a reply, he pulls hard and slams the door close, and before Minami could react further, the ambulance drives off, sirens screaming.  
  
 _What the fuck was that all about?_ Minami stands there, feeling a little stupid and…suddenly suspicious. He quickly snaps himself out of his daze and heads to the SUV to find the driver seat…empty. _Fuck_.  
  
He sprints to the BMW and looks inside. Three men, all unconscious and in various degree of injury, lie inside, appearing untended. Swearing, he ducks out of the car and attempts another call to the emergency services and the local police with his free hand, when the other ambulance arrives.  
  
Minami yanks aside the first one down, startling the man. He flashes the badge at him. “Where is the other ambulance going?”  
  
The paramedic gives him a confused look. “Sir?”  
  
“Another ambulance was here before you. Where is it going?”  
  
The paramedic blinks, obviously very confused. “Sir, we’re the first one to respond. We have no reports of anyone else responding to the accident. We just received the report a few minutes ago.”  
  
 _Shit_. “Could you have had some sort of miscommunication?” In the background, Minami could hear the police siren. Local cops, finally arriving to the scene.  
  
The paramedic shook his head. “I don’t think so, sir, but that is a possibility. Please excuse me, sir, I have to tend to the injured.”  
  
Minami reluctantly lets go of him, even as his whole body goes cold with foreboding. So who the fuck were those guys from earlier?  
  
He heads over to the local policemen, determined to find answers. When he spots them, he does find his answer, or at least, a big part of it.  
  
Standing and talking with the cops, seemingly towering over them, is Asami Ryuuichi.  
  
(Later, Minami finds out that the ambulance, along with the young woman inside it, never reaches any of the hospitals.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The response time of ambulances in Yokohama, Japan is, apparently, excellent, about 5 minutes or less, according to a study I found. But sometimes, it does take a while before they arrive. The whole thing here happens in a few minutes, my estimate around 10–20 minutes or so. I could be horrendously wrong, and if I am, please ignore it. orz
> 
> To those who may be interested, the car Takaba and co. are in is from the BMW Series 7 High Security line. I spent several hours researching how armored/bulletproof cars respond to accidents, but my research yielded crap, so I was forced to ‘wing it’. Also I had to ask my friend on how police and EMTs behave in a scene of an accident. Any inaccuracies is her fault *kidding*.


	14. Chapter 10

 

The helicopter that would take him back to Hong Kong is late, delayed by sudden changes in the wind currents, so Fei Long has little choice but wait in their rented mansion in Japan for a while longer.  
  
Tao had been anxious when he heard of Fei Long’s plans to go to Japan. “Master Fei Long, couldn’t someone else take care of the matter instead?”  
  
Had it been anyone else, Fei Long would have been displeased at the question, but this was Tao, who only thought of his well-being. Much of boy’s — no, _young man_ , Tao is nearly fourteen now, after all, almost to his shoulders in height — anxiety probably came from the last time Fei Long went to Japan, from which he ended up severely injured with a gunshot wound from Asami.  
  
The man who is very likely the root of all Fei Long’s recent concerns.  
  
Fei Long _had_ been cautious, ordering someone in his stead to investigate the matter, but when that man ended up murdered, and when he received intelligence that Yanzhui was in Japan, he had little choice but see to it himself. As risky as this move seemed, he had to show he is _still_ in control, that he does not fear Asami or Yanzhui’s shadow.  
  
The aftermath of his abduction of Takaba and his subsequent confrontation with Asami in the ship had been…vexing. That Baishe under his leadership had been infiltrated so deeply by agents from two of his most hated and bitterest of enemies and rivals all these years had been a bitter pill to swallow. People he had given his trust used it for ill and then betrayed him.  
  
The purge he’d ordered after the events had been very cathartic, if only for a short moment.  
  
The matter left Fei Long in a far more vulnerable position than he’d liked. In the months after, rebellion and discontent over his leadership fermented within the ranks, a festering sore that refused to go away. One had even dared to say out loud how, had Yanzhui stayed as their leader, he would never have allowed Baishe to be in this pitiful state it was in.  
  
(Fei Long had that man’s tongue ripped out, his body chopped into pieces and fed to the fishes, a lesson to others. He’d been in such an icy fury afterwards that only Tao dared and was able to stand being around him for long.)  
  
In the first few months after the incident in the ship, there had been a grudging, but tense truce between him and Asami. Later, however, he had reports of Asami ‘cleaning house’, but nothing too alarming. And then reports of disrupted routes and stolen shipments came in, which then gradually escalated to murdered agents and contacts and burned factories and poppy and cannabis fields. Surviving witnesses swear and intelligence confirm that the perpetrators spoke in Japanese, were Japanese. A flimsy evidence, but still.  
  
He only knew one Japanese man who could have a vendetta against him.  
  
 _Are you doing this for her_ , Asami? Fei Long had wondered. Balked of his revenge then, had Asami decided he did want payback after all?  
  
Whatever Asami’s reasons may be, they have not been made clearer by this trip — too many unanswered questions to think about before he makes his next move.

 

Then, as he prepared to leave Japan, he received word of Takaba in a nearby restaurant.  
  
Truth be told, he should have left her alone, but his curiosity and desire to see her after so many months had been too great. He’d received little news of her after the ship, many of them conflicting and unverified: that she and Asami were no longer lovers, that she had moved in with him, that Asami had killed a man who molested her.  
  
The last time he’d seen her image had been in a news report, where it seemed she had saved an actor from a stalker of sorts. Fei Long had smiled then. How very like Takaba to do that.  
  
It is certainly some sort of cruel irony, that as it turned out, in this whole matter, the one who would held the truest to her word was Takaba Aki, a person who’d he’d wronged greatly. The image of her jumping between him and Asami, asking him to spare Fei Long and give him back the deed and throwing not a few bitter truths about them still burned into his mind, and left lingering feelings that he did not know how to handle.  
  
Perhaps these feelings are why the sight of the tell-tale swell of Takaba’s belly felt like a knife through his stomach, a piercing pain that left him breathless. For a heartbeat, he had thought, _Is it mine?_ but just as quickly wiped it from his mind with the certainty that Asami does not share what he considers his alone.  
  
And Takaba, Asami has made it very clear time and again, is his and only _his_.  
  
Asami would have never let any child of Fei Long live, whether Takaba liked it or not. The thought filled Fei Long with inexplicable rage and sense of loss.  
  
But had Takaba been pregnant while in his custody, what would have he done…?  
  
“Master Fei Long, pardon the intrusion,” one of his men says from behind the door, knocking twice.  
  
Fei Long frowns, displeased at the interruption of his musings. “What is it? Have I not let orders not to be disturbed until it is time to go?”  
  
“Forgive me, but there is an urgent matter I must speak to you.”  
  
The man enters, and quickly prostates himself to the floor, but not before Fei Long catches the man’s sickeningly pale face. “Master Fei Long, I can find no way to soften the blow for this news. Tao has been kidnapped.”  
  
“ _What?_ ”  
  
The man flinches at Fei Long’s outburst, but keeps his tone steady. “Tao was taken while on an errand a few minutes ago by unknown assailants. Two of our men that came with him were killed as well.”  
  
For a moment, Fei Long felt nothing but pure, white-hot rage. How dare anyone lay hand on Tao, the young man who quite possibly the only source of innocent joy he has in this world? How dare they?  
  
He is all set to make orders to have Tao found and returned unharmed at all costs, but his subordinate is not finished. “Laoban, there’s also another matter you must know.” He pauses, and then takes a deep breath. “Asami Ryuuichi is downstairs with some of his men. He says–he says he wishes to speak to you. That he has something you may want.”  
  
 _So, this is your vengeance then, Asami?_  
  
\------  
  
The first time Takaba wakes up, the first thing she sees is the image of a masked man with burning eyes against the sudden, harsh glare of fluorescent light.  
  
Heart lurching in her chest as blind animal panic seizes her, she tries to bolt up, but something is keeping her down. She struggles against her restraints, but her movements were sluggish, weakened, and her bonds too tight, too secure. She tries to scream, but no words emerge from her throat, only a pathetic whimpering cry.  
  
Around her, there’s a murmur of voices, words spoken in a language that seemed familiar but made no sense to her, and then a rush of movement — arms everywhere, pinning her down, pressing her still — then a sharp, painful jab into her skin.  
  
(Mercifully, it’s not a waking she’ll remember.)  
  
The second time she wakes up, the first thing she sees is another blurry image of something, fat and dark and in front of her—  
  
—she jerks up fast, her legs tangling with the sheets as she scrambles back to get away, arms crossed defensively in front of her, and then slams hard against a metal railing. Breathing hard and blood rushing loud in her ears, she fights through sudden vertigo and disorientation and tries to focus at what she’d seen. A chair. It is only a chair.  
  
She inhales sharply, trying to calm herself. After a moment, as her heartbeat slows down into a dull rhythm, she hears a familiar beat, and feels painful stings all over her body. Slowly, she sweeps her gaze around the room, sees the bare white walls, the plain chrome and steel furniture, and two familiar monitors. Hospital. She is in a hospital. Why is she—  
  
—her hands fly to her abdomen, pressing against it. Her belly is still swollen and rounded, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she hadn’t–that nothing had–  
  
A forceful kick from within tears out a ragged sob from her throat, and she smiles despite the salt of her tears. She takes another calming breath as she huddles herself close, still a little wary. Looking down, she finds herself bleeding at the wrist, a needle and its tube that lead to dextrose not far. A neck brace is wrapped around her throat, chafing a little against her skin. Around her head is a tightly wound bandage, smooth to touch.  
  
Why _is_ she in a hospital? Has something happened? An accident, most likely? The last thing she remembers is being in a car with Suoh and her Dad, driving away from her confrontation with Fei Long…  
  
With her stomach suddenly heavy with dread, she looks around once more, this time with a more critical eye. Her room looks like one of those plain, impersonal hospital rooms, but something is _off_. For one thing, the furniture looks _too_ new — she can’t even smell the usual choking, sharp antiseptic scent most hospitals have, everything is too quiet…  
  
The door suddenly opens with a loud bang, and the sound sends her scrambling again, pressing against the wall, heart thudding loudly in her chest. Her fingers scrabble around for anything around her she could use as a weapon, gripping the dextrose stand tightly when she sees a familiar figure emerge.  
  
He maybe wearing an eyepatch, but the man before her is _Yuri_ , the bastard who—  
  
“Get in, you brat!” In her shock, Takaba didn’t notice another presence beside Yuri, who he held in what seems to be a bruising grip. It is a young man, stumbling in his steps, still in his adolescence, and somewhat familiar. When he turns his face to her, she felt her heart stop.  
  
“Tao?”  
  
(Unfortunately for her, this is a nightmare she will not soon forget…or end.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About two years ago, I was involved in an accident. A bus hit me while I was crossing the road and I was knocked unconscious. I don’t remember ANYTHING that happened between the time I was hit by the bus and when I woke up in the ER, but apparently I was awake for a while after the accident then and tried to run from the guy taking me to the hospital. To this day I don’t remember this happening. Head injuries do WEIRD things to your memory.


	15. Chapter 11

 

“A…aki?”  
  
Takaba looks at Tao with horror. His hair is clumped with blood, eyes glazed with shock and pain. His lip is cut, swollen, and bleeding as well, and the right side of his face is swollen, mottled with angry purple-black bruises.  
  
Yuri then shoves Tao hard, and the young man stumbles towards her with limping steps, body swaying unsteadily.  
  
“Tao!” Flinging back her sheets, she moves quickly to catch him when he trips over his own feet, and grabs him by his shoulders to steady him before drawing him close and wrapping protective arms around the young man. His breathing is ragged and loud against her ears.  
  
She glares fiercely at Yuri. “What have you done to him? He’s just a kid, you–”  
  
“Shut up!” Yuri wrenches Tao from her, all but flinging him to the floor. In a heartbeat, Yuri has her pinned against the bed, his hands wrapped around her throat, fingernails gouging into her windpipe as his fingers squeeze tight, cutting off her air. “You gravid immoral whore, don’t think the bastard child in your belly is going to save you–”  
  
“–Ngh!” She claws and pushes against his arms and fingers, legs kicking out in desperation to dislodge his grip. One kick manages to land on Yuri’s stomach, and she follows it with two more to his groin; they succeed in loosening his hold and send him reeling back, bent over in pain.  
  
Panting for breath, she scrambles upright, and grabs the nearest object she could use as a weapon — her IV stand. She is all set to thrust it into Yuri’s enraged face when the door opens, and another, unfamiliar man dressed in dark blue strides into the room.  
  
“Enough!” His voice cracks like a whip in the air, and Yuri freezes in the act of pulling out his gun from his back. “What do you think you’re doing?”  
  
Yuri glares at the man, but answers in what sounds like the strange language he and Mikhail spoke in — Russian — most likely. He gestures to her, looking at her with eyes full of murderous promises. Panting for breath, she tightens her grip on the stand, ready to strike if any one of them made a threatening move at her or Tao. Out of the corner of her eye, she checks on the young man, who has managed to sit upright, and is now using the wall as leverage to slowly stand on wobbly legs. His gaze seems to be fixed on the stranger, his face twisted with pain, anger, and fear.  
  
The stranger looks annoyed at Yuri, but when he turns to Takaba, the expression on his face smoothens to neutrality, though she could see the hint of speculation in the slant of his eyes. He seems to be Chinese, if his traditional silk clothes are anything to go by, with a mole just below his left eye, and just a little shorter than Yuri. Is he a rival of Fei Long’s? Another enemy of Asami? She does remember hearing about Asami having troubles involving the Chinese recently from Mitarai, but she had assumed it was Fei Long…  
  
“Forgive Yuri’s manners,” the man said in flawless Japanese, casting Yuri a baleful glance over his shoulder before facing her again. He stalks towards her with careful, precise steps, keeping his hands behind him. “It seems he has much…unfinished business with you. I hope he hasn’t upset you unduly. Distressing the mother is bad for her unborn child, isn’t it?”  
  
“Thank you for your concern,” Takaba says, trying to keep her tone as light and as impersonal as his, but she can’t help the barbed note in her voice. “Maybe you should have taken that in account before kidnapping us, whoever you are.”  
  
“Ah.” He takes another step closer to her. This time, he didn’t bother to conceal the speculative gleam on his eyes as he sweeps his gaze over her, tilting his head to one side. “So you’re the little slut Asami and my sweet little brother had fought over so fiercely about.”  
  
The man’s insult is ignored for a far more shocking revelation. Brother? He’s Fei Long’s brother?  
  
She narrows her eyes as she studies the man before her. There’s nothing in this man that even remotely resembles Fei Long, but…maybe that shouldn’t come as a surprise. She remembers Yoh mentioning Fei Long is an adopted son of the late leader of Baishe. He and this man are probably not blood related.  
  
“I must admit, you are a pretty little thing, but not as beautiful as my brother, and with no other qualities that would make you…extraordinary.” As he reaches out for her, ashe raises her stand threateningly at him, noting as she did the scattered splatter and specks of blood on the otherwise pristine white of his cuffs.  
  
His lips curl to mocking smile at her reaction. “Why Asami would choose you over my brother, or why even Fei Long would look upon you favorably, or resort to such extreme measures over you, I don’t understand.” He then casts a malicious glance over his shoulder to Yuri, who scowls back at him. “Their taste is certainly…lacking.”  
  
“You’re nothing like Asami or Fei Long,” Takaba says, impassive. “And they are nothing like you. So you can’t be expected to see what they see.” She looks at him straight in the eye, and mirrors his smile.  
  
 _Fuck you, asshole._  
  
Fei Long’s brother’s eyes turn black with rage at her words, his coldly angular face suddenly devoid of any trace of kindness or humanity, and that more than anything sends sharp slivers of fear up Takaba’s spine, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. “Let go of the stand, whore.” His voice is a harsh hiss, like that of a snake ready to strike. “Or I will have Yuri finish what he started on you and the boy.”  
  
“Now!” A gunshot explodes inside the room and the stand drops on the floor with a loud clatter. Takaba clutches Tao close, having yanked the dazed young man away from the gun’s line of sight to keep him from getting shot.  
  
“Very good.” He gives her a pleased, reptilian smile that makes her skin crawl. “A doctor will be here shortly to tend to you and the brat’s wounds. I will speak with you later, when you’re more…presentable.” He nods to Yuri, and they both leave the room, but not before Yuri throws her a knowing smirk.  
  
As they exit, five goons file into the room, stone-faced and armed to the teeth. Aki represses a snort of derision, wondering if she should be flattered to be worth such security measures; instead, she focuses on Tao, whose injured body trembles in her arms, and examines him with a light, comforting touch, biting her lip to contain her rage at the harm done to him.  
  
She isn’t given much time, as the door opens again to reveal a short, pear-shaped man in a white coat and a Gladstone bag, the doctor Fei Long’s brother mentioned, most likely. He smiles at her, revealing a row of teeth crooked as gravestones, his glasses glinting in the harsh fluorescent light.  
  
Behind him, the door closes with a soft click, sealing all of them in the room.  
  
\------  
  
Asami and Fei Long’s meeting takes only a few minutes to set up, leaving Fei Long precious little time to plan for the matter and map out his strategies. But the tense urgency of the situation leaves him with little choice. Any moment they waste could have a huge impact on Tao’s well-being.  
  
Fei Long’s outward façade of calm crumples for moment at the thought of the young man. He has always been immensely fond of the young man, who had been one of his few joys and comfort in this world. An innocent and bright light that should have no place in his darkness, and yet he is there, always a smile at hand.  
  
If he is harmed, I will eviscerate Asami myself, Fei Long vows savagely, his palms curling into tight fists. And yet even as he thinks of Tao and of promised retributions, he thinks of another bright light: Takaba Aki, who he had harmed greatly a few months past. The overwhelming guilt the he had been at fault why Tao had been taken tears into his heart with renewed fury, a grief that would be sure to haunt him for years to come.  
  
How long has Asami been planning for this treachery? Did Yoh have something to do with this? More questions assault his thoughts and crowd his mind, but he pushes them aside as one of his men announces that Asami is here. He rises to his feet, steeling himself for their confrontation. Beside him, his men stand in wary attention.  
  
Asami stalks into the room, two of his men behind him, his coldly arrogant face revealing nothing of his thoughts, but around him is a palpable aura of dark malevolence, one that made the hair at the nape of Fei Long’s neck stand on end. Every step he takes seems to echo inside the room, synching with the Fei Long’s heartbeat.  
  
He stops just a few feet from Fei Long. For a long moment, there’s only silence as Asami stares at Fei Long, who returns his look with outward calm.  
  
Then, Asami reaches, almost casually, into his coat–  
  
Guns from both sides are out and cocked in a second, but Asami, undaunted, only pulls out a pack of Dunhills, taking out one stick and lighting it with a single snick of a lighter. He continues to coolly contemplate Fei Long and his men before puffing out thick, acrid smoke into the tension-filled air. “I see, Fei Long,” Asami drawls out, “that you haven’t learned your lesson.”  
  
Fei Long narrows his eyes. “What do you want Asami?”  
  
They struck like lightning, accompanied with the thunderous roar of guns firing and explosions. Fei Long doesn’t even have time to pull out his gun as a searing pain lances into his thigh, and sends him staggering down in pain. His men are pulling him down and away for cover, even as smoke and gunfire continue to erupt in the room. His eyes try to track where Asami is, but it seems he has melted into the gas fog.  
  
Suddenly, hands holding him fall away, and in a heart beat he finds himself pinned to the floor, staring into blazing amber eyes. “Where is she?” Asami’s face convulses with fury, his fingers tightening the grip around his neck, fingernails digging into his flesh. His vision tunnels into darkness. “Where. Are. They.”  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m not sure how much has Yoh told Takaba about Fei Long, but I’m assuming he said lots. Asami probably told Takaba a few things as well.


	16. Chapter 12

**XII**

 

Even injured and in pain, smoke stinging his eyes, Fei Long swiftly dislodges Asami’s grip around his throat, and throws him back far enough to give him time to stand up and deliver a blow to Asami’s shoulders, sending the man reeling back.

The last time they had fought, Asami had been injured, the bullet wound from Fei Long’s shot still unhealed, and even then he had been a formidable opponent. Now, unhampered by injuries, Asami fights him with ruthless, relentless brutality, all but ignoring Fei Long’s blows and dodging most of them, cold amber eyes tracking his every move and waiting for an opening, a weakness, his hands, feet and body quick to react with stinging, sharp punches and kicks.

Fei Long takes cover behind a pillar, pulling out his own gun. Around him, he could sense their men were fighting, but all his focus was on Asami and his next move. “Is this your vengeance then, Asami? You took a boy from my household and now you seek to—”

“Is this a new part of your delusions?” Asami demands with a feral snarl, sounding as if he’d thought Fei Long had gone _mad_. “I took _nothing_ of yours. I hold no _boy_. It is you who have taken something of mine. And I want them _back_.”

Fei Long inhales sharply at Asami’s words. _Is he lying? But why would he? What has happened to Aki?_

His moment of weakness happens in a heartbeat. A turn with too much momentum as he moves away from the column sends knives of pain shooting up from his wounded thigh, distracting Fei Long long enough for Asami to emerge from seemingly nowhere and move in for the kill.

Asami grabs Fei Long’s hair with a harsh yank, and slams his face into the floor as his other hand twists Fei Long’s arm back. Fei Long’s vision swims and blurs, even as his ears ring, and he could feel the sting of a cut lip, and taste coppery bitterness of blood in his tongue.

“I’ve tolerated your meddling long enough.” The nozzle of Asami’s gun seems to burn against his temple. “I should have killed you on the ship but she pleaded for your life. A pity you decided to be ungrateful and destroy the efforts of her goodwill.”

“Asami,” Fei Long grates out, “I. Did. Not. Take. _Her_. I vowed never to harm Aki–”

“You have no right to say her name.” Asami cuts in with cold fury. The air seems to scream as his hand moves down to him.

And then darkness.

\------

The news comes to him early in the morning, as he was perusing over some documents in his cozy little study in his _dacha_ near Saint Petersburg, a snifter of brandy in one hand. Distances mean very little these days; modern technology has made it possible for one to know what was happening on the other side of the world almost instantaneously.

Someone has kidnapped Takaba Aki, _again_. And now Asami is confronting the most likely suspect, Fei Long, in what appeared to be vicious fight between the two groups in Tokyo. Reports of fatalities in both sides are still unconfirmed, but it seems to be shaping into a bloody affair.

_And so it begins_. He narrows his eyes, studying the swirling amber liquid in his glass. If Mikhail had known that silly girl would cause such a…commotion, he wouldn’t have traded her back to Asami. Her value it seems, exceeds far that of the deed to the casino.

It still puzzles him greatly, how _they_ could act so foolishly over a slip of a girl. A pretty little thing, but hardly worth all the trouble; he’d seen women with far more beauty than hers among his whores, with a far more tractable personality. In his custody, Takaba had been fierce and ferocious, even in her despair, a cornered little alley cat with needle-sharp claws that left painful scratches. He’d been glad to be rid of her. What Asami, and it seems, Fei Long, sees in her to drive them to this madness, he has no idea.

_Lord, what fools these mortals be!_ He smiles a little at the thought. It would probably be best not to interfere for now. He will only observe, holds his cards close, and then, when the time is right, he will act in the manner most beneficial to him.

For now, he will sit back, and watch the action unfold.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Lord, what fools these mortals be!_ is of course, from Shakespeare’s _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_.


	17. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this part: Aki and Tao try to cope with their captivity. Yanzhui is an asshole, pass it on. And Aki revisits a problem she had thought had been solved months ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : Violence involving a pregnant woman and young child. Sexist and demeaning language. Oh my God, Takaba and Tao, I am so sorry.

 

“Was the food to your liking?”  
  
Before she could stop herself, Takaba looks up from her plate and then, with no hesitation at all, proceeds to dump her food all over Yanzhui’s ugly little head, dirtying the bastard’s pristine, very likely obscenely expensive, clothes. Then before he could retaliate or even react, Takaba stabs him in the eye with her chopsticks.  
  
Which is what Takaba _would_ have done, if she _could_. Unfortunately, certain circumstances prevent her from doing that, so the best she could do at the moment is to look Yanzhui in the eye, and nod curtly.  
  
 _How pathetic_ , Takaba thinks, as she feels the hot rush of shame down her body. _Here I am, having a nice, meek little dinner with the vilest human being on earth, when I should be tearing out his throat._  
  
The ‘cozy little dinner’ is not her own fault, or her idea, but Yanzhui’s. For some insane reason, he wanted to have dinner with her, about almost every day. Takaba had balked at the idea, fought against it, and on their first ‘dinner’, she told Yanzhui, “You and your food suck. Leave us _alone_.”  
  
Yanzhui had remained impassive at her insult, and just simply turned and nodded to one of the guards. A few moments later, they then hauled in Tao, who had been sitting on a chair in a corner, kicking and screaming, and proceeded to beat and whipped him bloody for her ‘insolence’ before her very eyes.  
  
“As the good doctor tells me physical trauma would be bad for you and the unborn child’s health,” Yanzhui tells her in a calm, dispassionate voice even as Takaba fights the men restraining her to get to Tao, as she screams for them to stop as they strip off his clothes and then whip his still-injured back, the crack of the whip cutting through the air, loud and terrible as thunder, “all punishments for your insolence would be meted out on the brat.”  
  
Takaba never wanted to kill someone so bad as she did then, to rip out someone’s throat out and claw someone’s face to strips of bleeding flesh, never felt so helpless as she watched Tao’s back torn to bloody shreds at every strike of the whip. Tao’d tried not to cry — she could see him bite his lip bloody to stifle his screams — gods, he was so brave and resilient — but towards the end it was not enough and he was sobbing and whimpering and crying out in pain, every sound tearing into Takaba’s heart.  
  
Afterwards, they didn’t even let her comfort him — they locked her in her room, alone, Tao taken somewhere else for the gods only know what. That was the first time she ever wept since her abduction. The second time was when she and Tao were finally reunited again. He was weak and injured, but alive. They’d clung to each other as if never intending to let go.  
  
This memory in mind, Takaba tries not to flinch and shudder in revulsion and punch him in the face when Yanzhui gives her that smug, slimy reptilian smile of his. “Good.”  
  
“May I leave for my room now?” Takaba says coldly. She wants to be out his presence as soon as possible, as far away from this monster. If she stayed any longer, she’d up to throw up all the food she’d eaten. She thankful at least today, Yuri isn’t here to look at her with that disgusting, creepy stare. She had thrown up after dinner when he was there, unable to stomach both Yanzhui’s slimy company and the way Yuri’s gaze seems to creep all over her.  
  
She doesn’t understand the point of these dinners. They didn’t speak while they ate, and if the idea was to poison her, surely he could do that without going through the fuss and risk of setting up a formal dinner — with candlelight and cutlery, and fancy tableware. Cutlery! She could have stabbed Yanzhui with her fork! Didn’t anyone think of that?  
  
But then, perhaps they knew she wouldn’t do anything. They took Tao from her again this early morning, and that was a weapon against her far more effective that a knife at her throat.  
  
Yanzhui narrows his eyes, and for a moment Takaba fears he would do something. But she’s survived Asami and Fei Long and Yuri and Mikhail, and she’d be fucked if she loses her nerves now. She merely returns his gaze, willing her eyes to show nothing, and only reflect. _Let me fucking leave, damn you!_  
  
He must have been satisfied with what he saw, as he made a dismissive gesture with a flick of his wrist. “I do hope you’ll like my surprise for you when you go back to your room.”  
  
 _Surprise?_ Behind her, she could sense her ‘escort’ move closer to her, ready to ‘accompany’ her back to her cell, though not before none-too-gently hauling her up to her feet and handcuffing her hands behind her, the chill of the metal far milder than the sudden chill up her spine at the thought of what Yanzhui’s surprise would be.  
  
But before she could ask him what his surprise was, she’s dragged out of the room, Yanzhui smiling mockingly at her all the while.  
  
(She did make an effort though, to take note of Yanzhui’s arms, bared today by rolled-up sleeves rather than hidden as usual.)  
  
She keeps her head slightly down as she walked, but her eyes rove around, committing everything she sees into memory as much as she could. She notes that today, there were more guards posted in the corridor than usual, their posture tense and on alert. Some eye her with hostile eyes, full of promises of pain.  
  
Has something happened? Has this something to do about Yanzhui’s surprise? And what of Tao? She had tried to ask of Tao as subtly as she can during dinner, but she’d been pointedly ignored. Is he alright? Were they hurting him again? _Please let him be unhurt._  
  
Her speculations are momentarily interrupted when she arrives at her room. “Tao!” she cries out as soon as she sees him, standing in her room, a guard beside him. She quickly steps forward, for a moment forgetting the thug holding her in place. She’s yanked back, hard, the brute growling something in a language she didn’t understand. Briefly, the thought of injuring the fucker enters her mind, but then she hears the familiar click of cuffs unlocking, and instead she all but sprints to Tao and enfolds him in a gentle embrace, mindful of the injuries of his back.  
  
“Are you all right?” she whispers. She takes a step back, and looks at him. Tao seems thinner, so pale and sickly, black circles under his eyes and bruises all over his arms. His clothes are filthy, smeared with dirt and blood and gods know what else.  
  
“Does he have clean clothes? Bandages?” she all but demands to Tao’s guard. The man stares at her impassively, perhaps not understand what Takaba had said, but then indicates a small pile of clothes on her bed, and possibly a medical kit of sorts. (Later she’d find a note on top of it, in messy handwriting, saying “As reward for your good behavior.” She immediately tore that one up.) “Thank you,” she says, more out of instinct and habit than anything else. The man’s expression does not change at all.  
  
She turns back to Tao, who has not responded at all to her. “Let’s get you patched up and cleaned, all right?” When dull, lifeless eyes stare back at her, she fights back tears of rage and helplessness, and just pulls him close again. Dimly, behind her, she hears the two guards leave.  
  
As soon as the door slams and locks shut, Tao whispers back, voice hoarse, “I want a bath. They made me stink with their smells.”  
  
Takaba lets out a chuckle, catching herself before it turns to a sob. She runs his fingers through his hair, and smiles at him, her first genuine one for today, then impulsively places a kiss on his forehead. “All right.”  
  
\------  
  
Takaba thinks they’ve been here for about a week now.  
  
Takaba has desperately tried not to lose all sense of time, but it’s incredibly hard. Their cell has no windows to observe the changing sky, no clock to tell time. She doesn’t even know where they are right now. All she has to rely on is her own instinct and body clock — and frankly, that was not enough.  
  
All she knows for certain right now is that she’s been kidnapped again, with company this time — Tao and her unborn child. A no-brainer conclusion, really.  
  
But maybe that wasn’t the only thing she knows. After being kidnapped for several times already, Takaba had taken to reading a few survival guides, just in case — considering Asami’s line of work, it’s probably an inevitability. It may have taken her a day or so to work things out, but using the knowledge and experienced she’d gained, she’d tried to analyze her situation.  
  
One thing she’s fairly sure of, is that her kidnapping had been meticulously planned — probably for months. Yanzhui and Yuri knew their routines and schedules, knew when best to strike. It frightens her to think that they’d probably been under surveillance for quite a while, and they had known nothing about it. Has someone betrayed them?  
  
Another, more terrifying thing she was fairly sure of, is that escaping would be difficult. If her kidnapping had been so precisely planned, then it would stand to reason they had ensured her captivity would be well-enforced. She could already tell that from the cuffs and the numerous guards, the psychological games using Tao to keep her in line, the cameras and the bugs — in all her previous kidnappings, this is the one where she’s the most suffocatingly guarded. She’d been able to escape from Fei Long and Asami, true, but in many of those times, her abduction had been impulsive, spur of the moment, with very little planning and preparation. She is not so lucky with this one.  
  
But they _have_ to get out of here. This isn’t like with Fei Long, where there’s a faint possibility there would a trade, or with Asami, where once he’s taken his amusement he’d let you go. Takaba has not heard it from them, but she senses Yanzhui and Yuri meant to have them for keeps for something. Whatever that something is, Takaba knows for certain it is not for good.  
  
\------  
  
If there’s anything she could be thankful about, Takaba supposes it’s that she has a decent bathroom, with a decent shower and tub and toiletries, and in light of the terrible cold (for, wherever they are, it is absolutely freezing right now), hot water flowing from the taps. Whatever their reason for giving her this comfort, Takaba isn’t about to argue with them lest it be taken away — for far more important reasons than warm baths.  
  
Takaba laughs a little when Tao goes wide-eyed and blushes a little when she joins him in the bathroom. “I’ll help you wash,” she says, and before Tao could protest, she discreetly puts a finger on her lips. She has a plan, one that’s been brewing in her mind since she’d seen the bathroom.  
  
She opens the taps. Water gushes from the faucet, loud and noisy, sluggishly filling the tub. Then, leaning over, making sure her back shields her hands — she knows there could possibly cameras, she doesn’t just know where exactly they are — she begins tracing characters on Tao’s back, nodding once when she sees Tao’s eyes go wide open in recognition and understanding. _Ok to talk_ , her fingers write, slow and careful not to hurt his wounds, _but whisper_.  
  
Taking a washcloth, she moves as close to him as possible and begins to carefully clean his body as she talks to him in whispers. The noise from the taps should mess up the audio of the bugs — she’d read that somewhere — but would still allow them to understand each other. “Did they do anything else to you?”  
  
“No.” Tao flinches a little when the towel brushes over the bruises on his face. “They just locked me in a dark, smelly cell with no food. Or water.”  
  
To her surprise, he touches her hand, as if in comfort. “How about you? Are you ... okay?”  
  
“I’ve … been better, but I’m coping. I’m a pro at this, you know,” she says, smiling slightly. “You don’t need to worry so much about me. I’m … fine.”  
  
“But you’re having a baby. Isn’t this sort of thing … not good?”  
  
“The baby’s fine,” she says, biting her suddenly tremulous lip. It’s true, at least if she believes the tombstone teeth doctor who had examined her. Despite the car crash, she’d only had minor injuries — scratches and a bit of concussion, and her son is as safe and as healthy as could be — he is, after all, well cushioned in her uterus.  
  
“Your uterus is like a bomb shelter,” the tombstone teeth doctor had said, baring his hideous teeth in a rictus grin. He’d been a revolting creature, and she’d felt bile rise up her throat as she, restrained, was poked and probed and touched without her consent by rough, gloved fingers. She had thrown up after that examination, almost brought to tears.  
  
She ducks her head so Tao couldn’t see the sudden unshed tears at the memory, her fingers gripping the towel tighter as she gathers her composure. Taking a deep breath, she calms herself enough to ask, “Tao, what can you tell me about Yanzhui?”  
  
Tao’s face shifts to an expression of utter contempt. “He’s vile,” he hisses. “He’s a traitor. He killed his and Master Fei Long’s father in cold blood. Master Fei Long never told me of this, but I’ve heard people talk. Some people think Master Fei Long should have had him killed when he should, but he never did. Killing a family member is still taboo, even if it’s someone like him.” Tao obediently ducks his head a little when Takaba starts lathering shampoo in his hair, looking a bit relax as she works it into bubbles. “They say … he was obsessed with Master Fei Long.”  
  
“I see.” For a moment, she idly wonders why Fei Long had hated Asami if he knew it had been his brother who had killed their father. But that’s not important now.  
  
In all the guide books Takaba had read, they advice being humble, of trying to get their abductors to respect them, to look at them as humans, rather than tools or objects. If Yanzhui had killed his own father then this advice is useless, because Yanzhui respects no one other than himself and perhaps, power. Any person who kills their own father in cold blood surely has no humanity left in him, nor has the ability to empathize with others.  
  
“Aki-san,” Tao suddenly says, and Takaba looks down to find him staring up at her. “Why do you think they took us?”  
  
“I think kidnapping me has become an initiation rite into the elite supervillain boyband,” Takaba says dryly, rolling her eyes. Then she turns serious. “We’re probably being used as leverage for something.”  
  
“Do you–” Tao’s voice catches in his throat, and his eyes suddenly fill with unshed tears. “Aki-san, they–before they brought me here, someone told me Master Fei Long and Asami-san are dead. Do you think that’s … true? It can’t be true, can it?” Tao rises from the tub, his words coming out faster and louder. “They’re lying! Master Fei Long isn’t dead! He would never be killed so easily, not by vermin like them.”  
  
“Tao, lower your voice, they’ll hear you.” To his credit, Tao quickly shuts his mouth, and sinks back into the tub.  
  
She doesn’t reply to him immediately, instead taking the shower head and rinsing the shampoo off Tao. Despite her persistent questions, neither Yanzhui nor Yuri told her anything about Asami. She knows nothing of what’s happening to him right now, and Tao’s words made her heart slam hard and fast against her chest.  
  
She remembers she’d been talking to him, before the car crash. God, he probably heard the impact. She couldn’t imagine how’d he’d felt then, hearing that.  
  
She did not sleep her first night in captivity, her mind to busy conjuring images of terrible things that could have happened or is happening to Asami. _Please let Asami be safe_ , is a constant prayer on her lips. Please. The possible death of her father and of her own child are horrible things she never, _ever_ wants to think of again, and the possible loss of Asami …  
  
Takaba couldn’t bear it. Her heart seems to stop at the thought, her mind stuttering to a stop. She would live on, of course, she’d survive, but she could _never_ –  
  
“They’re not dead, Tao,” Takaba says, her voice low and fierce. “If they were, we should be too. We don’t have much use for them if both Asami and Fei Long are dead. This … thing isn’t about _us_. It’s about hurting _them_.” She clenches her hands to fists as she gathers her will, her strength, everything she has. She must not let despair _win_. “But fucked if I’m going to be stuffed in a fridge by these assholes, and neither are you going to suffer the same fate. I refuse to be a source or tool for Asami’s pain, even if some idiots seem to be determined to do just that.”  
  
She reached out and took Tao’s hand in hers, entwining their fingers before squeezing gently. “We’re going to get out of here, Tao. I promise.”  
  
Tao looks uncertain for a moment, but then smiles and nods. Takaba smiles back.  
  
The mood now considerably lighter, they go on to finish the bath in a comfortable silence, the sounds of water suddenly soothing and relaxing.  
  
\------  
  
Takaba is helping Tao get dressed when Tao suddenly looks at her and asks, “About the baby…is it … Master Fei Long’s? Because–” he doesn’t finish that sentence, and instead blushes again.  
  
Takaba stares at Tao for a moment, struck speechless, but is quickly overcome with the urge to laugh. “Tao, why would you–”  
  
 _Oh. Oh god_. Takaba stills, and her pulse races as a terrible idea forms in her head. Does Yanzhui think she’s carrying Fei Long’s child? Tao did mention he was obsessed with Fei Long. Would that obsession extend to–  
  
 _But that’s stupid! Surely he’d realize there is no way this is Fei Long’s child!_ The months don’t quite add up! But then Takaba remembers her conundrum months ago — she, too, hadn’t known for sure who the father of her child was, the closeness of the dates of … events, and her own whacked-out cycle had made it difficult. But further examination of the OB-GYN had confirmed conclusively who the father of the child she’s carrying.  
  
Takaba also suspects Asami has taken covert steps to determine the paternity of the child. He is the man, after all, who had no compunctions covertly having her blood tested to confirm her pregnancy.  
  
 _There is no way I would have been able to continue, or even know about this pregnancy if Asami had found out the child isn’t his_. It’s a chilling thought, but a true one. What that says about her life choices she’ll worry about later. (It’s far too late anyway.)  
  
If Yanzhui did think she’s carrying Fei Long’s child, however improbable that is, that would explain why she’s being treated so well. He wants my child. Oh god.  
  
The idea, the very thought of Yanzhui taking her child from her – she ducks her head, fighting back the nausea, the sudden painful twist and burn in her heart. She wraps her arms around her swollen belly, and as if sensing her distress, her child moves, kicking against the walls that kept it safe.  
  
For now.  
  
 _He won’t take my child, He won’t take our child, I won’t let him_. She’d tear his limbs off, break his neck and every bone in his body, gouge his eyes out with her nails. _He will never touch him. Or even lay eyes on him_. She would kill him with her bare hands and teeth first.  
  
“Aki-san, are you all right?” Tao asks, and when she opens her eyes (when had she closed them?), she finds him looking at her with concern.  
  
“Of course, I–” She doesn’t finish her sentence, as then the door bursts open, and guards swarm in. Takaba, acting on pure instinct, pushes Tao behind her, shielding him with her body. If her hypothesis is true, they are least likely to hurt her, so Tao is safer behind her.  
  
Before she could ask the armed men what they were here for, Yanzhui and Yuri enter the room. Both of them are smiling. Smiling as if they had won.  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
Yanzhui smiles thinly at Takaba, unmindful of the hostile tone of her voice or the glare she is giving him. “I told you I have surprise.”  
  
“I don’t want your surprises.”  
  
“A pity, but I’m in a generous mood I shall give it to you regardless.” His voice rings with feverish excitement as he speaks, “Asami is dead, as is my brother. They’ve killed each other, as they both suspected that the other of kidnapping you or the boy.” His posture straightens, and his smile grows wider, almost monstrously so. “I’m afraid your unborn child is now fatherless, Takaba-san.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry I made you wait for so long, guys. Thank you so much for your support and comments. They mean a lot to me, more than you could ever know. You guys are the best. 
> 
> Writing this fic has its ups and downs, and it has been incredibly difficult at times, especially lately, but thanks to you guys I always try my best to power through. You are all wonderful, and I’m so happy you guys gave this fic a chance. 
> 
> My deepest thanks, always, to sunflower-san, who lent her ear during a troubled time. ♥


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